jolly jumper

here's the thing about having a child that takes an oral steroid for 4 months...
they don't sleep.
Hardly ever.

so at 12, at 2, at 3;30 then at 5, you are up. Then up at 6. Then 7. Life's a constant mission to harness the energy and deal with the irritability.

Your husband sleeps in one room with one baby on the bed. One baby that has something wrong, tongue or GI, undiagnosed because he is still gaining, but something that makes him unable to eat food at 6 months. So you feed him by bottle every two hours. Every day. Almost since birth. Regardless of the clock. That son sleeps with Daddy.

The other child, Sumo, Chubby, The Big One, Tubby, sleeps with you. loosely. the sleeping part. so you find yourself up. All night. For 6 months. Plus the several before when you were so pregnant with twins that sleep was impossible. I would wager that I have been up - sporadically -  virtually round the clock since last April.

It effects my speech, my decision process, my metabolism. It effects every choice, every reaction.
Forget tired.
Forget the fact  that I have aged so much, so so much in these last months.
Forget all that.
What's impossible is functioning while awake.

Yet today was the same.
Up ungodly early, make lunch for Girl, dress all three for preschool dropoff (by 9 thank you), cross town for craigslist stroller purchase, home to deice driveway, feed boys, out to shovel again, dress boys in afternoon clothes (morning vomit and pee buildup on prior outfits) ALL to bowling alley for Girl to have some physical activity, home then for more feedings. Nothing cleaned, nothing sorted, all alive. Phone calls today to tenants - who are renting our house come July 1, to Early Intervention to reschedule because their visit conflicts with the boys surgery date, to 3 sets of parents to arrange childcare/visits and update medical status, phone call to crazy HIV positive godmother to help arrange Section 8 certification paperwork. Snacks, dinner, bottles and dishes. I never left the 13x13 comfort of the kitchen save for my car.

I know this is parenting. I get it. I get that everyone has things they do.
But I always thought I'd have babies and that's it. Id work at it. I didn't think that having them, 6 months in, would consume everything else in it's path.

Managing.
Existing.
Not wishing time away, but wishing for the hemangioma to shrink so we can get baby off the steroids, for the system to mature, for the baby to stop throwing up, for the tongue to grow, for baby to eat...wishing for the next few weeks to pass so their tiny surgeries pass and another milestone can be reached. Wishing for snow to melt (slowly dear god slowly please because the water, much like Richard Gere in Officer and a Gentlemen, has no place left to go) so I can walk outside. Wishing for a lot of things but wishing more then anything for her children to sleep. Because with sleep, anything is possible.

Instead I stand at a crowded kitchen counter.
Listening to the sound of springs and rattles.
And Tiny Teddy bouncing in his jumper at 3:30 am.
Because I need to tire that son of a gun out.


bounce m'fcker bounce