Last night at dinner, I looked at my husband and said, running my finger through my hair, "I don't know why, but I'm just so tired." He looked at me quizzically, "well, you get up at 4:30, work all day, have two kids, and are studying for two sets of board exams all evening."
It feels obvious when you say it like that, but I don't know that we give ourselves room to be tired.
Since I last sat down and reflected, we took another foster placement, and now have two kids, 11 months apart (now, 15 months and 26 months). It sounds ridiculous to say this (or write it, I suppose) but I fell victim to some hubris in planning to expand our family. I think by around age 18 months or so, I felt like we had this "having a kid"-thing figured out. Parenting one kid with two of us wasn't that hard, once we adjusted our lives to having a kid, to not doing things in the evenings with our friends without lots of pre-planning and babysitter scheduling, to daycare pickups and dropoffs and sorting through bins of hand me down clothes. I distinctly remember saying to J, on the night before they dropped off our daughter, "it can't be that much harder than having 1."
Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. (I know all the parents of multiple kids are laughing at me right now).
Two toddlers is SO much harder than one. Someone is always pushing over someone else, taking the book the other was looking at, shoving the other out of the way to run over to the speaker and click the play button. The first few weeks, especially, felt like they would never end. (I think that's a blog post in itself, for another day, though I do so want advice and opinions on how to build resiliency in a little one).
But there's also such funny moments - the jabbering back and forth in the car, or watching them on the baby monitor after they've been put down for the night, holding onto the bars and ducking down and standing back up and laughing at each other. They find so much joy in each other - it has been such a gift, and such a way of introducing that joy to me. And we are so thankful for that.
I would love to know your tips for growing your family. We are unique in many ways, I know - transracial, adoptive, and many other adjectives. But also we are the same, and I would love to know what worked for y'all in battling the craziness that is toddlers x2.
But good grief, am I tired. One set of boards down, one to go. (Being med peds seemed like a great idea 4 years ago...)
I'm glad someone in your life reminded you that you do get the right to be tired. I was just at a reunion dinner with my residency classmates. There was only one other person there who was a parent. At one time, the conversation rotated to TV shows that people were watching, and one person commented, "now that residency is over, I get to come home at night and drink wine and watch TV!" - and I realized that I and the other mom in the group were a little quieter at this point and may have slightly different after work activities than our counterparts...
ReplyDeleteI hope you get to acknowledge your tiredness and set aside an early bed time or warm bubble bath soon. Good luck with boards!