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2006-09-09 - 11.58pm previous entry next entry
It's_late...
Wow, what a weeeird feeling - it's 5.15pm and BOTH boys are awake and active, and yet I am sitting at the computer writing a diary entry! I don't think that has ever happened before! It's Saturday though so Neil is home, and I feel like I am slowwwly losing my sanity for desperate want of some time to myself, so after a brief snappy moment with Neil (which I HATE having happened in front of the boys), he sent me off upstairs to do something on my own for a bit. Matthew is happy at the moment in his bouncy chair with the Kick and Play music playing on the toy bar. Arthur is about to eat his tea, so here I am.
Lately I just feel so DEMANDED OF all the time, and that is okay because it comes as a norm with having two children under the age of two. But I feel like I have had absolutely no respite so far. We have no help, no family around, and the weekends are absolutely swallowed up by me trying to get a bit more sleep during the day to catch up on the HUGE sleep-debt that has been building for nearly 2 years. But that doesn't ever work because the little ones need me for something every hour it seems. One of them wants to be breastfed (and I know I'm probably crazy but I just have a "thing" about only feeding them snuggled up to my body (ie not from a bottle of expressed milk - I don't even have the equipment at home for that - and that's that), or somebody needs settling for a nap, or it's ME who is needing something, like a wee or some food or whatever. The result seems to be that every weekend I spend most of Saturday trying to catch up on sleep and end up getting about 90 minutes of broken sleep somehow, over the course of the whole morning and half the afternoon! Sunday is depressing because it's the last day of the weekend and then the week begins again. Urgh. I am just beginning to CRAVE some alone time.
It's not as bad as I'm making sound though, honestly! I love my lil beanie boys and I have had some GREAT days lately where I just feel like I'm managing wonderfully and LOVING this stage of parenting like nothing else. Even after an exhausting day full of tantrums and sleep-deficient boys and food refusal, etc, which has come on top of a night where I only got a broken 3.5 hours sleep, I STILL have felt wonderful about what I'm doing. But then on the other hand, I still have some days where I just want to run and hide and not be responsible for anybody or demanded of in any way! I guess today is a bit like one of those days.
Anyway.
On Thursday I went for my blood test. Neil arranged for a gardener to come round while I went to the appt to assess our hideously overgrown garden and give us a quote for them to fix it up so that it's suitable for two little boys to tumble about in. So he took a long lunch-break from work and watched the boys while I went to my appt, and that way he was home to see the gardener. I am SO excited about finally getting the garden sorted! The house is the other issue, and we are also looking at companies who will just come round an BLITZ your house and help you with decluttering and everything. It's beyond our own means now, seriously.
I feel ashamed to say it, but my stomach ulcer has come in handy in some ways. It's awful to think I sort of used it as a bargaining tool (!!), but Neil told me I need to find some ways of de-stressing once I got diagnosed with it. Which is TRUE, I do need to. But other than the stresses and strains of the stage of parenting that I'm at, the BIG stresses for me at the moment are the garden and the house. For MONTHS I have been nagging poor Neil to get someone to come and fix them, because I have honestly been finding it soooooo depressing to spend all my hours in such a revoltingly dirty and cluttered house. It's really stressy to be in, and then some days I am too exhausted to take Arthur and Matthew out and Arthur is climbing the walls and I WISH I had a nice garden for a toddler to run about in and burn off some energy. Since before Matthew was born, I have been asking Neil if we can perhaps get some help in to sort those things out. But he has this big "must do it myself" issue going on, and we've had countless arguments over the summer about how it's never going to happen, and if it DOES happen it means that Neil will have to take serious amounts of time off work just to tackle it all, and that will mean he is wasting holiday time on the house and garden, and will still be too busy to spend time with me and the boys. But he STILL insisted on doing it himself, despite me pointing this out, saying it was something he just had to do himself. Urgh.
Anyway so when he said I needed to de-stress, I told him that I couldn't think of any way to make the bringing-up-the-boys thing less stressful, or how to find time in the 24 hour day for some de-stress time for myself, any more than I already do. BUT, the house and the garden were stressing me out hugely and having those off my back would make a big difference! ;) The very next day, he called a gardener and arranged for her to come round :) When he told me, I nearly cried with relief and I made sure I thanked him over and over, because it really does mean THAT much to me to get it fixed. So, yay! I hope we can afford it. We still don't have the quote yet.
I have been taking my medication for 5 days and the first two days I felt really scared because I was in more pain than ever for some reason. But it's getting a little better now. The pain between my shoulder blades and in my chest has gone, which is a BIG relief, and my stomach pain isn't so constant. I did notice that if I bring my knees up to my chest I get a sudden pain like someone is holding a fork into my stomach from underneath it, and it takes ages to ease off after I put my knees down again (which, obviously, I do right away!). It's such a sharp and specific pain, that I feel pretty sure it's an ulcer rather than gastritis. The doctor seemed to think that too. Grrreat. I remember in my teens wondering whether I'd ever have an ulcer one day - what an odd thing to wonder! But I have always been so stressy, and have always felt my stress in my stomach more than the rest of my family did, so I wondered if I might be more prone than most? But it still might be due to the Helicobacter Pylori. I have to wait till the middle/end of next week to phone for the blood test results.
Thanks Valerie and Mallory for your comments about it! And thanks for the advice, Valerie, about the acidophilis. I have taken a really good multi-billion dophilis formula in the past so I'll look for that again, if I do end up on those horrible antibiotics! Yeurgh!
Oops, it's now 6 hours later! Neil called me to get Matthew's night nappy and stuff together while he cleaned Arthur up after his tea, so I went down and then we did the whole bedtime thing and ate dinner and watched Ice Age, and then I uploaded photos from my camera, and NOW it's too late to write any more. So it's a bit of an unexciting entry, but oh well. I'll have to write some more tomorrow. I really wanted to write an entry about Matthew, because I feel like he's changing so fast and I haven't been writing about him much lately. I don't want to forget it all, and I will hate it in a year or so when I look back and don't really see much record of anything from this stage. There is LOADS to say, so I'll try to get it done soon! And photos, but not as many as I thought I would have. I need to take more photos of my lovely boys!
Also I am "doing things" with both the boys' sleep, and I want to write about that too. But, no time. Matthew is stirring a bit and it's nearly midnight, urgh. But first of all, here's Arthur pulling a hairband out of his hair (hence the blurriness!). He looked sooooo pretty with his hair all tied up in a little sprig on top, hehe! It's getting soooo long again, and he found my hairband and after trying to put it in MY hair, he wanted me to put it in his, and stood patiently while I did it! He had cute little curls turning up all the way around at the sides and the back of his hair, and this sweet little sprig on top - oh, he looked soooo pretty! ;) Anyway, he was pretty fast at pulling it out the INSTANT I got the camera, but oh well! Here he is:
And here they are watching Monsters Inc, haha! Arthur ADORES this movie, I think he must have watched it about 50 thousand times already. He asks for it several times a DAY, but of course we never let him watch it THAT often! It is an absolute lifesaver when I have to settle Matthew upstairs or when Arthur is about to throw a mega tantrum or something. Or if I'm just too knackered to move for a while! I have discovered that Matthew seems to love the movement and colour of the TV and if he's crying and crying and I really need to pee or get some lunch or put the wet laundry in the tumble dryer, I can put him in his bouncy chair in front of the TV and he'll be calm and intrigued by it for a while. I hate that my VERY young children sit and watch TV like this! But gosh I need it sometimes, just to get a moment to do something, or to divert a meltdown, etc.
Anyway, Arthur is so sweet on the few occasions I have sat Matthew in front of the TV in his bouncy chair. He sits right up close to him (usually on his potty!) and when I come back from the loo or the kitchen, I find him gently bouncing the chair with his hand on the back of it, while they both watch. If Matthew is crying in the chair, Arthur tries to unclip the harness and get him out. He doesn't like me to leave him there too long! Anyway here are a couple of photos of them:
And my latest favourites of my boys together - Matthew was lying on a floor mat on his tummy, looking at some bright toys, and Arthur insisted on lying next to him (which he does a LOT). I took a couple of photos:
My sweet little boys! :)
Okay, getting too late, must go. I'll try to update again tomorrow. We're hoping to attempt to go to church (only the second time since Matthew was born!) so I had better get to bed, otherwise our chances of making it there will get smaller and smaller. I am suddenly really hungry though, so I think I'll have to eat something before I can sleep. And Matthew is due to wake any time soon for a feed. Back soon!
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