Losing Control - I

I label this post Losing Control - I because I know there will be more to follow. Do you ever get the feeling that you are losing control of everything around you? I get that feeling a lot but it tends to do with a needy cat, a two year old, and a new baby. There is just only so much you can do during the day with a two year old when you have to stop every three hours and nurse a baby. And when you have to nurse the baby, what do you do with the two year old? I pose this not as a funny or rhetorical question but for real - what DO you do with a two year old when you have to nurse a baby? So far I haven't figured this out. I close as many doors as I can and hope for the best.

Thus far in the six weeks we have been doing this Amelia has managed to harass the cat without me able to stop her, climb into the pack and play (playpen to all you non baby people out there) which we have been trying to discourage since we don't want her in there with James, color on the couch (sorry Chuck but it did come off!), pull scissors out of the utility drawer, the list just goes on and on. I try to put on her shows but that doesn't always work, or it only works for a short time.

She generally will systematically destroy the order of the living room, starting with her dinosaur puzzles - 30 giant puzzle pieces strewn about the floor. Then come the hard plastic dinosaurs; these usually get thrust onto James and me. When I tell her that James can't have hard toys she starts to bring the snuggly toys to us and even though I have put most of them back in her room, they keep finding their way back down. Once Amelia realizes that I am not going to play with her, she decides she will play by herself with her little people - so many little people that she dumps all over the floor. That occupies her for a while but she eventually gets bored and decides it is time to read a book. Amelia has a LOT of books and she needs to look most of them over before deciding on one. And if you have never seen a two year old choose a book it is not an orderly process.

So by then end of the ten or twenty minute feeding session my living room looks like a tornado has gone through it. And if I am very lucky it will just be the living room! But a bit of good news to finish up this post - Amelia helped me put all her puzzles away today and that is a big ol' check in the win column!