Last Day of Spring Break ...

After a great Easter weekend of yard projects, playing in the sprinkler, getting together with friends, and even going to church as a family, we're here at the last day of our wild Spring Break.  It started off a little rough, when I went into Ruby's room to get her out of the crib, only to discover that Ruby, her bedding, her new black baby doll (which actually just looks like a white baby doll, but tan - she loves it, so whatever), and the actual crib were all smeared with poop.  Big bummer, but thankfully I had already had a few cups of coffee, so was able to handle the whole situation without a major breakdown.  Then we were meeting friends at the playground to play and eat lunch, so I spend roughly two hours getting everything ready for that.  The playground was fun, and we also ran into other people we know - one of the many benefits of small-town life, and Ruby was relatively composed in the face of the picnic.  I kept it all out of sight until it was time to eat, so that went much better than the aforementioned kite-picnic day.

Now, all three kids are in their beds, napping, and the house is so quiet I almost don't know what to do with myself.  Of course, it won't last long, but it's nice to enjoy the little moment.  Ever since we brought Ruby home, we've been going going going.  It's been hard to find time to return emails, look at bills, make phone calls that need to be made, put things away that I keep walking by that I know I need to deal with.  I think Matt and I both feel pretty overworked, and we hadn't really stopped for a minute to realize how much our lives have changed.  In so many ways, having a toddler is a million times easier than having a newborn, and we wanted Ruby so much and are so happy to have her.  So it feels crazy to have any resentment or weariness now that we're home with her and things are going so well.  But finally acknowledging it to one another made me feel better.  I remember that after Gus was born and we were so exhausted and busy and stressed with two kids, both not sleeping, Matt working all the time, no family around, etc, we didn't even have any time to have proper fights.  We would just both go around resenting each other for things - chores left undone, sharp words tossed out in the middle of the night when the other person didn't get the baby back to sleep before he woke up the other one, individual victories that the other person didn't seem to care about.  But we couldn't even talk about it, because there was always someone crying, and when they stopped crying, we passed out.  One day we just decided that we would just agree not to get a divorce for a year, and call that good enough until everything calmed down.  Not that either one of us was even thinking about divorce, but once we decided that, we really weren't so mad at each other anymore.  It was like finally saying "yes, this is really hard, and I feel annoyed all the time" made fixing it not so important.

Anyway, things are a million times easier now, even with three kids, but it still took me a little while to realize that something big had happened to our family, and things have changed again.  It's funny that we might have gone to Africa and brought home a child and not really anticipated that doing all that might upset the apple cart, but I think that's what happened.  So it's all good, not perfect, but really good.  But it's hard too.