Clara Day by Day

If you look back at our first week with Eleanor, I blogged about her every day. The fact that I have not done so with Clara is not because I lack the desire to do so. It is, of course, because I have almost no time to sit at the computer, much less try and write coherent sentences and then add pictures to the post and upload it. I spent the first week with Eleanor just hanging out in the living room on the recliner. I also wasn’t feeling so hot, and it took me a while to recover from labor. So me and the laptop had plenty of time to record Eleanor’s every movement and every family member that stopped by.

This time around, I’m feeling great, which is wonderful in many ways. I’m able to get around, I’m back walking every day and waiting for my follow-up appointment to get back to joining El for our Crossfit routine. I’m slowly putting the house back together and trying to gear up for a fall routine of productive days: regular home meals, playdates, house cleaning schedule, fun times with the girls, and (hopefully) time to write. I also hope to sleep regularly. This may sound ambitious, but I figure aiming high is a decent place to start and we’ll evaluate and adjust from there. (If you didn’t already know this about me, I thrive on organization, and failing true organization, I thrive on trying to attain organization.)

Of course, feeling well also means I’ve jumped right back in to being full-time mom, which means Elliott has jumped right back in to work on his end. He’s been working a LOT, poor guy.

And this ‘jumping back’ – or rather, jumping forward, since having 2 kids means the dynamics and challenges have forever changed – means what I get done has changed tremendously.

My first order of business, of course, is to watch over the girls and keep them safe. Second order is to keep them fed. This is hard to do at times, as Clara is quite the little gourmand, and prefers to eat slowly and with many pauses. She’d make an excellent Frenchwoman, but in the meantime, this can mean mom (and Eleanor) are often waiting on her to finish her meals.

Third order of business is sleep, which we’re working our way into a rhythm, trying to get Clara to get as much of it as possible, Eleanor to maintain her schedule, and mom and dad to not completely forget about it amid other things.

Fourth order of business is food for mom and dad, namely, family dinner, which can be hard to arrange and carry out given that 3-5 pm is the time of day that both girls seem to lose all patience with the world. Or maybe that’s mom. It tends to happen all at once, so it’s hard to tell who starts it.

Anyhow, we usually get dinner on the table in time for dad to come home, quite hungry, and after we all get re-fortified with food, we have time to play and THAT is truly the nicest part of the day: time together as a family.

So in all of this, mom might get a moment to bring a basket of laundry upstairs or take one downstairs. And if, by some miracle, both the girls nap during Eleanor’s naptime, I often crash, too.

But some days, I stop to write – like right now, when I’ve got a swaddled, napping Clara on my lap and I’m trying not to rest my elbows on her face while I’m reaching over her to type. And yesterday, amazingly, I managed to take a cat-nap, read a chapter of my book, and then also wrote on my fiction project all before Eleanor and Clara woke up. Amazing, I tell you.

So how is Clara doing, day by day? Well, she’s doing great: a wonderful (if slow) eater, a good sleeper, and a generally inquisitive outlook. She’s growing well, and we look forward to seeing how she grows up – both physically and in personality – in the months to come.

Ah. I hear Eleanor coming down the stairs and Clara is starting to stir. Time to try and get in a load of laundry before trying to think up a dinner while sitting outside watching Eleanor play in her kiddie pool and trying to keep her from splashing me while I nurse Clara.

In spite of the complicated nature of juggling 2 kids and helping one’s spouse get in as many work hours as possible, I have to say: It’s worth it. It really is.