All Stretched Out!

We have been so busy lately! I feel like I'm being pulled in fifty different directions all at once, while juggling thirty different balls. If we make it though the circus act this next month is going to be I will be truly amazed!

I'm still trying to figure out our new little one. She is a little sweet heart and by no means a bad/difficult baby. But I'm struggling. She is so much more demanding than Googie was (everything I'm about to list about her is the exact opposite from Googie). She likes to be held a lot. She likes to be swaddled. She gets scared very easily. She's a light sleeper. She eats as often as I'll let her. She won't take a binky unless I force it on her. She has fussy times where she'll cry from 1-3 hours at a time. I thought that having a second baby would be easier than the first because I would know how to take care of a baby, but she requires completely different care than Googie. I suppose that comes from being her own person, but it is taking me a long time to figure out what it is she needs. And I swear sometimes she just needs to cry for awhile.

Then there's Googie. She still needs attention. And she is a sweetheart too (I got really lucky so far not having bratty kids). But she still needs me to play with her. She still needs attention. The baby is taking up so much of my time that it's difficult. So when the baby is sleeping (in her bed, not my arms) I really try to make an effort to sit down and play with Googie. I feel bad because she's ended up watching a lot more TV than I would like lately (we're talking like two hours a day).

The thing that really kills me is when I finally get the baby to sleep without her in my arms; I need to get other things done. Like getting the house organized so we can move, finding an apartment, the mountain of laundry, taking a shower, errands . . . things that really need to be done. So I end up telling Googie to go find something to do because mommy is busy. And she does, because she's a sweetheart, but you can tell she feels ignored. It breaks my heart because when I do find the time to just sit and play with her she's all smiles, and you can tell she really, really, has missed mommy just sitting, playing, and paying complete attention to her.

Being a mom is a lot harder than it looks. But of course you already know that. I just hope that once we get through this transition period (new baby/moving) things will settle down and we'll be able to find our rhythm again . . . for all our sakes.