not all hearts and flowers

Lest my paintbrush be laden with too rosy a hue, allow me to paint a picture of motherhood that comes from the -- what shall we call it? -- less glamorous side of the business. The lunch and naptime routine has been stressing me out recently. What am I supposed to do with the baby while I make lunch, feed/supervise toddler, and then put toddler down for his nap? If she's sleeping peacefully, that's great. But what if she's hungry? Or just plain fussy? I've managed for the past couple of days with a variety of techniques, and today I thought I was going to pull off the naptime routine while the baby was napping downstairs. No such luck. As soon as I pull Levi out of his high chair, I realize the clock is ticking so I give him his two minute warning. I think he realizes this is out of the ordinary, because he usually gets to play an extra 15 minutes while I clean up from lunch. But today I want him to go straight to nap so that I can get back downstairs before Wendy wakes up. Two minute warning is up, so I tell him to go upstairs. "NOOOooo!" He does NOT want to go upstairs. Now, if I were able to haul his 28 pounds up the stairs, I would and he would probably be ok with it. But I'm not going to do it since I'm still sore from the whole c-section thing and overdoing it will just put me further behind on recovery. So the battle of wills begins, and then Levi just starts crying. And crying and whining and generally carrying on. I decide that I'm just going to leave the room and let him finish his crying business before we try again. At this point, Wendy is definitely waking up and Levi is just wailing. I sit with Wendy until the noise from Levi subsides. I peek around the corner and see that he's now busying himself with wiping his nose (running from the crying) on his shirt. I'm not a fan of that, but I decide to wait it out until he's really done with his fit. Soon he rounds the corner, calling "mommy" very pathetically. I'm busy trying to change a poopy baby diaper, when I turn around and see that Levi's face is covered in blood. He points to his nose and says "bug" (which means he was trying to dislodge something up there). He was wiping so hard with his shirt, he gave himself a bloody nose. Poopy baby. Bloody toddler. Sigh. Eventually, after I clean him off and remind him to tell mommy about the bugs rather than taking matters into his own hands, I get him up the stairs. He's very tired for nap at this point, so the stairs takes a while. Wendy is in the baby carrier strapped to my chest. We get to Levi's room, I unstrap Wendy and put her on the floor with a binky. Put Levi on changing table. Wendy spits out binky. Re-binky Wendy. Change Levi. Wash hands. Re-binky Wendy. Put Levi in nap clothes. Put Levi in rocking chair. Get Wendy into her room and swaddle her like a burrito. Turn on noise machine. Go to Levi and read a story. (Good thing he picks a very sweet, endearing story about big brothers.) Put Levi down in his crib (which requires me maneuvering him as well I can by using mostly arm muscles, minimal ab muscles). Go get Wendy, take her downstairs and nurse her. Sigh. Must remember to accentuate the positive moments rather than the toddler fits and bloody noses. Must remember the moment instead when I asked if Levi wanted to hold Wendy, he said yes, then proceeded to hold up his shirt for her and say "milk." Much cuter moment for the day. Let's try to remember that one instead.