I had all three babies in bed and the house picked up by 8pm tonight. Michael is gone for the evening, so it’s just me here to enjoy the quiet. The wonderful quiet.
I just wanted to write a quick note to new moms, or newly sleep-deprived moms. Or really anyone who is up to her ears in anxiety that the baby will never sleep more than 30 minutes at a time, or the toddler will never stop throwing 33 temper tantrums a day.
It gets better.
So many times this summer I would wake up to the sound of our two “big” little ones begging for breakfast or morning cartoons (having escaped their rooms themselves or having their dad get them up before leaving for work), and I would fight the urge to either snap at them or cry with exhaustion from being up so much that night with Gianna. My sweet baby Gianna is already five months old this week. She still wakes up at night–but just once usually. And I’m figuring out more and more how to read my baby to know her every need.
It’s such a struggle to stay patient with my kids right now, even crazy moving-out-of-state stuff aside. I don’t have to use one of my signature no-comma run-on sentences to list out all the ways a two-year-old and an almost-four-year-old can be a challenge to anyone’s patience!
But slowly, I know that it will get better. I will get just a little bit better at navigating the little dramas of the day and responding to the unique personalities of my children. And my children will keep growing up. I won’t even notice that as the weeks go by, there are one or two fewer temper tantrums every week or so, and then I won’t have to correct Gabe quite so much about disrespectful speech to me, and by Christmas, I’ll bet I won’t even remember the last time I had to fuss at him for poking Gianna in the eye with his toothbrush.
Another thought: I spent March through July waiting for Gabriel to start pooping in the potty instead of his underwear. He’s pretty much a pro at the whole using-the-potty thing now, but it took all those months for him to figure out #2. At the time, it seems at times like you will be soaking poop-stained Thomas the Train underwear in Oxi Clean every day forEVER. And then there’s the week that he goes three days in a row on the potty and you buy him a backhoe toy as a reward. The next week he only has two accidents…and then two months after that you wonder at how you can’t remember the last time he had an accident of any kind.
You better believe I’m making a Note to Self to re-read my own post when things get loud and crazy again with no end in sight. Which will probably be tomorrow at some point.:)
So true and love the last line, also very true!