Fears about the future and more insecurities about motherood

Ever since we pulled K out of preschool right before Christmas, I anticipated that there would be more K and mommy time. To the contrary, there's been less. Much less. When K was in preschool, I had a chance to miss her. And when I went to pick her up (granted a mere two hours since we had parted), I was all butterflies in the stomach to reunite with her and shower her with attention and affection. Now that K is at home around the clock, inevitably the quality of our interactions has decreased. After breakfast (which involves nonstop bargaining and nagging and outright threatening to get something nutritious into the girls) and after I put S down for her morning nap, I shower, come downstairs, and feel entitled to mentally veg. So K will either be watching the end tail of sesame street or coloring. Then once S wakes, we'll all go out for lunch w/ J. Where more nagging and threatening about eating takes place. Afterwards, the girls will nap (rarely at the same time - they instinctively know to wake once the other falls asleep) and then I am faced with the onslaught of indecision and anxiety (will the girls eat it????) in making preparations for dinner. By the time it occurs to me that I haven't read/crafted/played/made eye contact with K all day, it's time to eat dinner, give S a bath and put her down for the night. By the time S is asleep, it is, to my dismay, 10 pm. K is still awake but I'm done for the day. In fact, I completely shut down after this time and repeatedly tell her that mommy has to go savor her glass of wine now and agonize over my existence (perhaps not in those exact words).

If you were K, wouldn't you hate me and rebel at the first chance you had? I sure as hell would. Thus my fear at the wrath of adolescence to come...

me, here: trying to be a good mom...don't anyone be fooled...

Hopes for the new year...

I am 25 days late in keeping my 2010 resolution to blog every day. And that's because for 25 days I sat down, logged in, saw that I had 8 months of blogging to catch up on, felt the air around me thinning and finding it progressively more difficult to breathe, i fled. I mean, where can I start? How about with today. Let's just start with today. After all, this blog is for my two girls (2 girls!!! Who would have thought it was possible. Or right. I don't deserve them. But that's for another blog post) and I need to capture as much of their childhood as possible in pictures and words and impressions before another day lapses...

So today it occurred to me that I just might have lucked out in marrying J (ha, j/k J - I've felt lucky every day! Or I should have anyway). He is, without exaggeration, an AMAZING dad to our two girls. He dances, sings, kisses, hugs, dramatizes, reads, engages in all kinds of silliness - there is simply no limit to what he will do K and S. He even lasts longer than I ever could at the Disney store and knows every princess tale by heart for K's benefit. When S recently developed a mild rash due to her ingestion of peanuts, he drove all of us to the local ER and we circled around for 2 hours in case she went into anaphylactic shock (at 9pm, Sunday, approximately 20 degrees outside). He will hold S when she wakes up crying from her naps, sometimes for over an hour, so that she'll go back to sleep. He will stay with K in her sunday school class for 2 hours and not care that he's always the only parent there.

Costo shopping with daddy (sorry, totally random pic but so cute how he used a burp cloth to protect S from scary Costco shopping cart germs)