Today has been hard

I was first awakened at 3:30am.

My husband woke me to kiss me goodbye at 6am as he headed off to work.

At 6:45am my youngest decided it was time to get up for breakfast. My oldest awoke at 7:15am.

By 7:30am the baby was going back down for a nap. Exhausted, I crawled back into bed, only for my other charge to interrupt my attempts at sleep roughly every 5 - 10 minutes with random requests for random stuff.

Baby woke up at 8:30am. Screaming. Not falling back to sleep. She's up.

So far today I have had baby food sneezed on me, I have had snot rubbed on my shoulder. I have stepped in spaghetti sauce and baby food and am not sure how either ended up on the floor.

I have listened to an infant cry and sob and scream for the better part of three hours no matter what I did. Is she getting sick? Is she teething? Growth spurt? All three? Who knows. All I know is she's miserable.

I have told my older daughter 'no' what seems like 50 times already today, because I have to meet the demands of the tiniest in the house, and I wish there were some way to express to her how much I hate telling her 'no' so much. I wish she knew that I hate it almost as much as she does and I would love to do everything she asks. But I can't.

I have cried. I have yelled. I haven't laughed. Not many smiles today.

Today has been hard.

I strapped the baby in the high chair long enough to microwave the 6 year old some lunch and put together some baby food and a bottle for the little one.

I managed to scarf down my own microwaved meal when I finally got the baby to bed over an hour later, after she'd been awake for nearly five hours of crying.

Yesterday I spent the day trying to attend to the issues my oldest has been having lately. It's been rough around here the past few months. Really rough. So I dedicated all of yesterday to her. All of it.

I haven't showered in over 48 hours. Haven't done laundry or dishes or any other household chores in two days. And it shows. Terribly. I just used our last clean bottle. I've re-used our last clean baby spoon. So it's not really clean any more. We haven't even had time to do homeschool in two days. Thank goodness she's ahead in the curriculum. Buys us some leeway.

Today has been hard. And it's just past lunch time.

I am tired. On the verge of tears. Today has been hard.