The days can feel like such a rat race sometimes. Every day starts by waking up to a kid crying or calling for me. I’m usually very groggy and tired because I’ve been awake two or three times during my short night.
We’re trying to help Kaylynn go back to sleep in the middle of the night without feeding her since we know she’s capable of sleeping through. Last night we succeeded in postponing her 1am feeding until 3:30. During the day I’m trying to help her sleep more consecutive hours, too. She’ll usually only nap 45 minutes to an hour at a time.
I realized yesterday that an average day holds only two waking non-kid hours. One is during naptime IF I can get them both down at the same time. Desmond boycotts naps some days, but at least he’ll usually stay quietly on his bed for an hour. The other hour is after we get Kaylynn to sleep around 9pm. These times are also the only uninterrupted time I have to do dishes, fold laundry, or simply talk to Davin. As a result I’m often up too late to get an extra half hour to relax, but then I start the next day in a deficit and the cycle continues.
Exercise has fallen by the wayside for now. I just can’t pull myself out of bed any earlier and at the end of a long day I don’t feel like spending my final hour sweating. Yesterday’s exercise was playing “Larryboy spaceship” with Desmond and doing crunches with Kaylynn on my tummy. Oh well. The scale is still moving in the right direction it’s just moving slowly.
All that said, I’ve had a few refocus moments lately when I’ve heard of other families’ tragedies. Yes, this is a physically hard phase with precious little time to recover for a new day, but it is a gift. Some mothers would do anything to be able to hold their baby again – sleepless nights and all. And I am shaping these lives for eternity. Even the mundane tasks can be done to the glory of God. Yes, even cleaning poop off the floor… again.
