Wicked Tired

Now that I'm a working mother of two, I have gotten a sense of just how tightly scheduled my life is going to be. Probably for the next 18 years.

6:30 a.m. -- Alarm clock goes off; hop in shower; enjoy two seconds of peace and quiet...even if I'm too tired to really appreciate it

7:00 a.m. -- Wake up Noah (he then wakes up Lily and spearheads her until we walk out the door); get dressed/do hair/apply bare minimum make-up so that I actually look like a human being

7:30 a.m. -- Wake up Anna; nurse; diaper her/dress her; BEG Lily to eat just a little bit faster

7:50 a.m. -- PLEAD with Lily to take just one more bite of breakfast; wrangle her to the floor so that I can do her hair

8:00 a.m. -- Walk out the door (1st time); Noah gets kids in car (while standing in his underwear in our driveway); go back inside when I realize I've forgotten Anna's bottles; race out the door (2nd time)

8 - 9 a.m. -- Drive downtown; point out every ridiculously bad driver to my daughter, who now hollers at them on her own (I can just see her now, in 12 more years, flipping off strangers with her newly minted license in her hot little hand); get two kids settled in two different classrooms; kiss and re-kiss them both a zillion times

9:00 a.m. -- Race to my office, 4 1/2 blocks away; enter through the loading dock b/c it saves me from walking 1 extra block

9 -- 5:00 p.m. (if I'm lucky it's 5) -- Work, pump, work, pump, eat a late lunch, pee 12 million times because I am drinking so much water in an attempt to keep my milk supply good

5 -- 5:45 p.m. -- Walk over to the Huck; get two kids out of two classrooms; BEG Lily to go to the bathroom before we leave; negotiate with her re: which toilet might be worthy of her pee; pack up and head to the garage; head back up to the Huck when I realize that I've forgotten Anna's bottles

6 -- 9:00 p.m. -- drive home; make dinner; eat dinner; bathe Anna/dress Anna in PJs/nurse Anna/put her to bed while Noah steers Lily into her bedtime routine; clean up the kitchen while Noah reads to Lily; kiss Lily goodnight and give in, just once, for a final request for water (I'm sssooooo thirsty mamma/daddy!); threaten her that if she dares to even whisper anything else there will be dire consquences (after the 40th pleading of "I'm still hungry" "I'm thirsty" "I have to go to the bathroom" "I'm scared!")

9 -- 10:30 p.m. -- clean bottles used that day; defrost frozen breastmilk for tomorrow; fill bottles/pack in lunchbox (that will, no doubt, be forgotten at least once the following day); sterilize pump parts used that day; repack pump parts; lay out clothes for next day

Now, if I were smart I should go to bed at this point. But I'm not smart. Not smart at all. So usually around 10:30 I'll either hop on the computer, start going through my Tivo shows, watch some "live TV" or thumb through one of the 43 magazines I get each month. Of course, I'll then look at the clock what seems like minutes later to find that it's almost midnight. And, yes, the alarm clock is going to make its obnoxious presence known in 6 1/2 hours. So I crawl in to bed.

As if all of that weren't enough, poor Lily has a case of hand-foot-and-mouth disease (also known as coxsackievirus, which Noah thinks is hilarious). It's awful. It makes me sick to think of how much pain she's in right now. She's stopped eating most things (although I did convince her to eat a scoop of Ciao Bella vanilla gelato...YUM!), doesn't want to drink much, and seems to be on a sleeping strike. Poor kid, every time she nods off to sleep something will invariably bump up against her lip/cheek/mouth (even a feather would cause her agony at this point) , which wakes her up writhing in pain.

We all got a total of about 2 hours of sleep Wednesday night (except for Anna, who has been getting almost 12 hours each night). Noah, bless him, spared me last night. I'm not sure that he and Lily even managed to get 2 hours last night; I got a whopping 5. They're headed to the pediatrician's office this morning. I told him not to leave without a prescription in hand. If there's nothing they can give to Lily, at the very least I'd take an Rx for Ambien. For me. Hopefully it comes in a preschool variety as well.

You know you're wrecked when even the Starbucks barista raises an eye when you order a venti skinny hazelnut latte with TWO extra shots... Here's hoping for some nice shut eye this weekend.