A day in the life.
This is what last Wednesday looked like. Obviously I omitted all my pumping sessions and the endless supply of pills I'm still taking! And the countless amount of prayers I'm uttering under my breath as I pray for patience for my boys and grace for myself as I'm just physically and emotionally exhausted. So this isn't quite a day in the life, but you'll get the gist of it and the wide range of emotions everyone is feeling in our house!
The morning started off with both boys crying about how they didn't want to go to school or their little friends house. I had arranged for Ryan to go play with his buddies he normally plays with on Monday and Thursdays for our nanny share, but he obviously wasn't having it. So he stayed with me that day.
So this was the morning.
And then the boys decided to get into all their costume gear and Jack put on his flash mask and was carrying around the hairdryer like it was a gun. We don't have any guns in the house, no squirt guns even, but somehow the boys manage to turn all sorts of objects into a shooter. I don't even think they call it a gun, everything is a shooter with special shooting powers. And Jack sat on the front porch in this get up as he waited for his friend Noelle to pick him up for school!
Ryan's actually been a great little buddy at the hospital to be honest. He normally sits and eats his food for the first hour or so, getting up from his chair to see baby brother and to talk to baby brother. We're trying to teach him that baby brother now has a real name and he can start calling him Conor, but he keeps deferring to baby brother! And then he'll look at his books, but eventually there comes a time when he starts walking aimlessly around the room, and he's even walked out the door, and it's about that time that I pull out the iPad and let him watch a little show or play ABC Mouse. He could sit there with that thing for hours!! So it's normally an ordeal when I tell him it's time to put it away and go home. And I don't think this day was any different. I think he had a major tantrum when I told him it was time to go and he needed to shut that thing down and say his goodbyes to baby brother.
And this is me, pretty pleased with myself for getting us out of Conor's room, but I'm pretty sure Ryan's refusing to get on the elevator! So this is also my tired face.
And then he wanted me to carry him and he refused to walk, but I somehow managed to get him to the 3rd floor, and down the hall. We had yet to make it to the main lobby area and down the escalator to the parking garage. But we were making progress.
And then he refused to follow me and proceeded to climb up these stairs once we got to the parking garage, that took him up to the street. I refused to go after him, and he refused to come down. And it was a standoff! I eventually won, probably after I threatened to leave him there and informed him that he'd have to walk home if he didn't come with me. Parenting this kid is no joke. Peter and I are constantly being tested by his strong will and downright stubborn demeanor. I get tired just thinking about this morning and how I'll probably be doing the exact same thing tomorrow!
And then on the way home I just started crying as I thought about once again leaving my babe in the hospital and how hard this journey was going to be for all of us, not just for me, and how hard it already was. And how hard it is to see my friends still pregnant and to see them with their full term babes in their arms, to hear of the way they had birthed their babies and how it was so different than the way I had birthed mine.
And Ryan was asleep in the backseat, so I decided to record my thoughts into words as I took this video to document the state of my heart.
Be warned, it's real and raw and I'm incredibly vulnerable in it.
And that night, after I wrangled the kids to bed on my own, as Peter works at the pizza shop on Wednesdays, I lit my Remember glassy baby as I remembered Conor and the babe we had lost!
And then I went to bed, only after I had cleaned up the house, done the dishes, swept the floor, and pumped one last time.
And then I woke up and did it more or less all over again!
Wow Malia...that was real! Thanks for sharing a piece of your experience...i thought i had an idea but this puts it in perspective for sure. We are praying for you guys, we love you and your family, and can not wait until life settles down some for you all.
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