they're trying to break me

Let the hazing begin!! No less than 3 hours after we dropped M off for his 15 month, all expenses paid trip to Iraq, did the kids begin their initiation into my life as a "single" parent. W was so tired when we got home that he went right to sleep, but CB took some more convincing. She finally fell asleep at 11 and I took that opportunity to do some much needed house work. You know it's time to clean out the fridge when the sour cream goes bad! How is even possible for sour cream to go bad? What's it going to do, get more sour?

Anyway, I was able to rid the fridge of most of the home grown penicillin and I was starting on cleaning up the plate of diced chicken that had made it's way onto the floor and the serving of plain spaghetti that miraculously stuck itself to the wall when CB woke up with a shrill that could wake dogs in Italy. So I nursed her back to sleep and went back to peeling the dried pasta off the walls, while praying it didn't take off the paint or worse, the wall itself. Once that was done, I sat down to catch up on some emails when I heard another cry, but this time from W. By this time, it was 1 am so I decided I would just go lay down with him while he fell back asleep and then I would go to bed.

While I was laying with him, CB woke up again, waking both W and me. This is impressive because W has a white noise maker in his room to block the sounds of the house and normally, you can't hear a thing while it's on. So I left W, only to make him hysterical, to feed CB back to sleep. On a good night, W will fall asleep on his own, but he didn't and was still crying when CB was done eating. Being the guilt ridden mother I am, I brought W into my room to sleep in the crib portion of our bed. If that sounds weird to you, this might help explain:

I thought he would fall asleep right away, but he had other plans. 2 hours later, at 3:50, he was still awake, singing and talking to the night light, asking me to hold him and pulling away the second I put him in my arms. Clearly, that wasn't working for me so I put him back into his bed, with minimal tears, and returned to my bed.

As soon as I climbed into bed, my knee popped, waking CB. I tried nursing her to sleep but she didn't want that. She didn't want her belly or legs rubbed, either. She wanted to sit up and play because, clearly, 4am is the new 9am. She cried and fussed every time I tried to put her to sleep so at 6 am, I admitted defeat and decided to start the day. 4 cups of coffee later, both babies are sound asleep and I'm trying not to fall over every time I stand up. You may wonder why I'm not sleeping, too. Well, it's because I've had FOUR CUPS OF COFFEE!! Can you read the caffeine through the text? I can certainly feel it jolting through my fingers!

I know my babies have conspired and are planning to make me as tired and weak as possible so I am the most passive parent in history. They want to make me too tired to care and it's working.

In all seriousness, though, this is so hard on W and it's breaking my heart. He's going to need a lot of extra TLC in the coming days. He knows something big has happened and doesn't want to let me out of his sight. Poor baby boy. His whole world has been knocked upside down, again.