abc family

Managing

I feel like I should whisper this, but... life around here has been manageable lately.

We have:

1) an almost-five-year-old whom I am now homeschooling for kindergarten

2) a two-year-old who seems to be starting three-year-old behavior now even though his birthday isn't until January (The kid didn't talk until 16 months, but for some reason he has to be precocious NOW?)

and, of course

3) four-month-old twins. They are fairly mellow babies despite their reflux, but there are still TWO of them.

Considering these circumstances, I feel like "managing" is the best I can hope for. It's not going to be smooth sailing right now, but if we make it through each day with no large mishaps I think we're doing well.

Honestly, I have never been so proud of myself as I am now. I feel incredibly COMPETENT. I am somehow teaching Camilla, riding herd on Blaise and her, keeping the babies happy, and still getting laundry done, feeding my family, and keeping the house tidy enough that I don't go crazy. Looking at it objectively, I have zero idea how it's even POSSIBLE for me to do everything I'm doing. And yet. It all gets done.

Well, there is Bryan. Bryan is incredible, and I don't use that term lightly. He pulls his weight, and then some. I have no idea how I got so lucky.

I don't want to make it seem like it's not a struggle. It IS, and sometimes I melt down. I dread the end of the weekend when Bryan goes back to work. I'm stretched as thinly as I've ever been. My roots are out of control and I wear pajamas 85% of the time. 

But... when we found out we were having twins, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do it at all. I imagine I must have a breaking point, beyond which I will become unable to function, and I secretly suspected that twins might be it. What a relief to find out they're not.

When we first brought Linus and Ambrose home, I was often so physically tired that I would sob. Just because I was tired. Exactly like a little kid does. During middle-of-the-night feedings Bryan and I would each hold a baby and a bottle and sort of... moan at each other with exhaustion. We couldn't form coherent words, let alone sentences. 

But we got through that, and it is so much better now. It happened gradually, but the biggest turning point was when we cut out bottles all together. The babies exclusively nurse, and at night when one of them gets hungry Bryan hands the baby to me from the crib on his side of the bed. I nurse him lying down, then Bryan puts him back. Neither of us wakes up for more than a few moments. It is a great solution.

So now that we're not weak with physical exhaustion, it's really just the existential exhaustion. Most of the time I don't feel tired, just stretched, worn, thin from moving moving moving all the time. Hardly a moment when I don't have to *do* something, never a moment where someone might not need me to do something in the next. It's unrelenting and it really does wear us down.

It'll get better, though, and in the meantime I suspect this is good for us. A kind of training camp for the hard reality that is life. Something that will, in the end, make us better and stronger and happier people. 

I hope so, anyway.

She's also incredibly stylish

Of all the blessings this blog has brought me - and there are many - one in particular stands out.

This is Lauren and me the first time we met:

(Camilla was dubious, but she's since come around, and "Aunt Lauren" is one of her favorite people.)

Lauren blogged anonymously then, at the now-defunct Southern Comfortable, although she's long-since joined the world of bloggers with faces at Petroni. She was a reader of my blog and when I mentioned a trip to the DC area, she dropped me an email and we made plans to meet for brunch.

It was definitely the most promising brunch I've ever had.

In the three and a half years since then, Lauren and I have had countless margaritas together:

But the number of margaritas is outstripped many times over by the number of laughing conversations we've enjoyed.

She and her husband David are Blaise's godparents, and we're happy godparents to their son Nate.

And I'm thrilled that this ties us together forever, because there is no other couple with whom Bryan and I get along quite so well.

In May, when I called to tell Lauren I was going to give birth and that the twins would be in the NICU, she booked a plane ticket. I was vulnerable and distracted and exhausted and she flew halfway across the country, with a toddler in tow, to be here for me. I slept and pumped and cried and she stayed for a week, making snacks for my children and cleaning up their messes and listening to me blubber about how much I missed my babies, while taking care of her own child too.

I was a mess and she was a rock. That's the kind of friend she is.

I've never enjoyed a first conversation with anyone as much as I enjoyed that brunch when I met Lauren. (Even including Bryan's and my first date. Sorry, sweetie!) I would've enjoyed it even more if I'd known what would come: a friendship in which I can pick up the phone anytime, dial her number, and when she picks up, say simply "It's me."

I love having an "It's me" friend, and it's a major bummer that she lives four states away. But despite the distance, she manages to be a huge source of support - her post-twin-birth trip is just one example of all the love she's given me over the years. I'm a better wife, a better mother, a better person for having her in my life.

We talk nearly daily, and I still smile every time her name comes up on the caller ID.

Today's Lauren's birthday. Want to hop over and wish her a happy one?