Hiatus

Sorry about the long delay in posting. Turns out blogging - for me anyway - is a lot like exercise. It's addicting when done regularly, but step away from it for more than a minute and it's hard to get your groove back.

What's kept me from the keyboard is an overwhelming sense of everything else that I have to get done. Our littlest tiny is 5 weeks old now (!) and I'm just beginning to feel like life is manageable again.

I remember when The Boy was shiny and new, and I felt like our nacent little family was wrapped in a protective cocoon. The war in Iraq had just begun, not to mention the ACC tournament, and I'm sure there were other things going on that concerned the good people of our community, but all we had to worry about was how much The Boy pooped, when he would eat and how to get him to sleep. I know I was exhausted, and I'm sure I was anxious, but I remember most the incredible luxury of not concerning myself with anything outside the walls of our home - beyond the next trip to the grocery store.

I was looking forward to experiencing that honeymoon period again, this time without getting caught up in those first-time-parent worries, (What if he dies in his sleep? and, I'm not stimulating him enough - I must buy Mozart tapes! to name my top two,) that adulterated the incredible joy I felt watching the Baby Boy progress through his first few months of life.

What I didn't anticipate was how tough it would be to be the pregnant woman's partner once the pregnancy was over. I know from experience (have I mentioned the matching c-section scars?) how hard those first few days were for AR as she was trying to figure out the care and feeding of our Littlest Tiny while recovering from major surgery. But I started to feel like she had the easier job as I made endless trips from the hospital to the neighbor's to pick up The Boy and back to the hospital, then home to feed the dogs and maybe do a load of laundry, then back to the neighbor's to drop The Boy off and then to the hospital and back to The Boy to take him to school... when all I wanted to do was sequester myself in that hospital room to take care of poor AnnaRay and get to know the Littlest Tiny.

I thought things would be a little better when AR and LT came home from the hospital. I was at work when AR called to say she was finally getting discharged - the baby's jaundice had cleared up and so had her own post-op infection - and I felt like one of those 50s sit-com dad's passing out cigars in the hospital waiting room. I couldn't wait to pick up The Boy and get everyone home so we could start our new life together as a family of four. But as soon as we walked in the door, there were the dogs to walk and a meal to prepare and some shopping to do and The Boy to take care of and drugs to pick up at the pharmacy and more errands to run and more laundry to do and one thing after another pulling me away from that blissful new-baby haze.

The second one was supposed to be easier. We know more, for one thing, and I've noticed that big siblings, if nothing else, are a source of endless fascination for their younger siblings, so you have this built-in baby entertainment system. But even though this is our second child, it's still AR's first pregnancy, and we're finding that my experience - with nursing in particular - has not helped us much in informing hers. And while The Boy has taken to his role as big brother like a Southerner to barbeque, the logistics involved in the care and feeding of two are exponentially more complicated than one. Someone pointed out to us recently that having a second child isn't really like having two; it's more like having six.

So I go to work and take the Boy to school, while AR spends the day struggling with the nursing and the post-partum anxiety and depression, and the first moment we get alone together is also the last, when we drop into bed, exhausted. Sometimes I feel like AR and I are battling a war on different fronts, and I've barely had a chance to get to know my new daughter.