Where have I been? I’ve been a busy busy bee with these two cuties.Â
We had an AWESOME time at our college reunion last weekend. I’m going to do a whole separate post on traveling with newborns because I learned a ton from our adventure with our 9.5 week old babies. But the short version is: The babies rocked it and I am so so so so so glad that we went. I will treasure the memories forever and it was ridiculously surreal and wonderful to introduce Champ and Honey to our very best friends. Worth the exhaustion, for sure.
When we weren’t introducing our sweet little babies to friends, we were up late drinking beer and catching up with classmates we hadn’t seen in eons. It takes it out of you, drinking, talking for 15 hours a day, pumping (and dumping, blah) in dorm bathrooms….whew!
The morning after we got home, my Mom flew into town. It was her first visit since the babies were born and this one went a million times better. Never really got into that story on my blog, and I’m not going to, but suffice to say that hormones + sleep deprivation + my Mom’s anxiety about our little babies = not a great first visit.
We spent Tuesday shopping with the babies. Out to dinner (WITH THE BABIES) that night. More shopping on Wednesday. Then she watched the babies for us on Wednesday night while we went to a SUPER fancy dinner with some of our best friends from hubs’s graduate program, to celebrate their graduation. It was amazing and sooooo fun. But we got home after midnight and then were up every other hour with the babies. When the day officially begins at around 530am, a really late din takes a toll…
My Mom left Thursday night, then my three siblings arrived the next morning. The next three days were spent grilling out, going to an art fair, hanging in the apartment as a fam, dinner out (WITH THE BABIES!!), etc etc etc. Totally wonderful, but so tiring. Of course when it’s my family I shouldn’t feel pressure to be “on” and entertaining the entire time. But yet, I do. Because I want everyone to have fun, and I want to be a good host and a good daughter/sister, and the babies are up all night and so I just have felt like I’m barely staying afloat and basically it’s just been A LOT. You know?
In the midst of the visitors we were interviewing nannies and I called about a dozen references. Another post (always another post!) in itself. The great news is that (FINGERS CROSSED) we have stumbled upon an amazing woman and as heartbroken as I am about going back to work next month (crrrrrrrrry), I know the babies will be loved and nurtured and safe under the care of this person. Not the best time to be doing a nanny search (while we had visitors) but it had to happen that way as there is a lot of turnover with nannies in our ‘hood right now (professors and grad students leaving and their nannies becoming available) so we had to jump on meeting the best possible candidates.
Final reason for extreme fatigue: Our 11-week-old babies have not graduated beyond sleeping more than 3 hours at a time. Last night, I fed them at midnight, then hubs woke up with to a wailing Champ at 2 something but he wouldn’t eat. Then Honey woke up hungry as Hubs was putting Champ back to bed after changing his dipe, etc. Then Champ woke up hungry another hour later. And so on and so forth. We don’t sleep much. I seriously need half a pot of coffee every morning to make it through the day. Of course I am loving every second of maternity leave, but man, we are in a rough spell.
I’m not complaining. I adore caring for/doting upon/kissing/hugging/loving our beautiful babies and I love being with family and friends. I just need to say to someone besides hubs that I am tired. Like, bone-crushingly, my-stomach-hurts, how-can-I-keep-this-up tired. I treasure these moments with our babies when they are so young and sweet and little and the last thing I want to do is wish this precious time away…and yet I can’t help but dream of the days when they sleep more….
I am reallllllllllllllllllllllllly looking forward to a boring and mellow week on the home-front. Our next big airplane trip is for 4th of July and I think I’ll attempt gathering my strength until then! 🙂
Such A Good Egg 