Today was kind of a tough day, to be honest. It started out as many days where I stayed up late the previous night do, with Tristen getting ready for work, me peeking at her in my half-sleep, and her giving me a kiss as she leaves the room. Well and good so far.
Side note: sometimes she doesn’t latch the doorknob when she leaves the room. She shuts the door, but you have to make sure it latches or the cat, Magic, can open it, which is what happened this morning. I was cognizant enough this morning to pull the sheets over my head and make sure my hands weren’t poking out. If anything had been uncovered he’d have been relentless in trying to get some affection. I don’t mind petting the cat, and it’s nice when he’s being sweet like that, but I wanted to get a little bit more sleep.
I heard the boys and decided to get everything ready for them before getting them up. That included moving some of their stuff from the living room to the Woods (the add-on room that includes the laundry room, a mudroom, and my office). I also got their bottles ready.
They were fine getting up, as they tend to be. I always wrangle both of them into my arms before stopping on the way out the door so we can all three look in the mirror. That usually elicits smiles. Bottles went well, with Phoenix continuing to get better at holding his bottle. (Fawkes is already pretty good.) Then I sat them in what Tristen calls their sit-up seats. We do that after bottles to try to keep them relatively immobile and vertical to let the formula settle so they don’t spit up. I can’t tell if it make much of a difference because they tend to spit up a bit anyway.
As they started to get cranky towards nap time we tried something new. It’s bad, I know, but when you’re trying to watch two babies while running a business, you do what you can. What I could was that Tristen and I noticed a bunch of new channels had been added to Sling, including a lot of channels for young kids. I found Little Einsteins was coming on, so I let them watch a bit of that. It held their interest for a couple minutes.
I don’t know if I was surprised by this or not, but I remembered the words to the theme song. They seemed to enjoy me singing it. I guess it’s not really a huge surprise, really. I remember a lot of songs from shows Milly used to watch.
Fawkes and Phoenix were, at times, all over the place today. They were climbing on just about everything, from their sit-up seats to their car seats to the barrier (folded-up rugs) I had put up to keep them out of the dining room area.
I got a call from someone from a charitable organization we had contacted about getting some help with our house. They came out around 11, just after the boys had woken up as I was finishing changing a diaper. They were very nice people and they did a pretty good job, but I do have to make a few negative observations.
First, when I was told they were going to fix our ceiling, what I thought was that they were going to fix our ceiling. Instead, they just took out the bad parts, which means my dining room is currently exposed through to the roof beams in the attic. I wasn’t expecting to be cooling my attic space.
The second thing is that there’s dust on absolutely everything. I wish I had thought of saying something, but between taking care of two hungry, screaming babies and being relocated back to the living room, I didn’t really notice it. I’m not sure why nobody thought to hang up some sheets or some plastic or something and then put something down on the floor so it would all be contained. They did mop the floor when they were done, but there was dust on my desk, on the kitchen floor, on the boys’ toys, all in the cat’s water bowl…
As I said, they were all extremely nice and I’m sure the work they did will help save a bit of money in getting the ceiling fixed, but…
I had a meeting to go
Back home, Tristen was bugging out about the mess and about the hole in our ceiling. On top of that, feeding Fawkes and Phoenix their oatmeal in the evenings has been a battle for a little while now. For some reason, no matter how fast you keep the food coming for them, they get really angry, even when food is in their mouths. They scream and arch back and just will not settle down. With all that and just generally not feeling well lately, Tristen was just in a bad mood. It didn’t help when she spilled a warmed bottle of formula.
I’ve been there, though it doesn’t really help all that much to say that when a person is feeling that frustrated. I felt bad for her. After we put the boys down (we skipped their showers, which usually calm them down, but the bottles right before bed do the trick, too) we chatted for a minute before I got back to work and she went to talk to her mom. I told her I wish I could make her feel better as well as her mom does. My thing, as she pointed out, is that I’m a good listener. It is a strength of mine, but sometimes I wish I knew what words to say to help people feel better. (Her mom is a good talker.)
Torrie texted me to ask if I wanted to pick up some of the food that had been brought for them on this, her and Gabriel’s first night out of the hospital since his birth. I walked down there to do that while Tristen took a shower. (This was actually before she talked to her mom.) I chatted with Torrie and Johnny a little and held little Baby G.
Apparently the guy who was going to grind our stumps already left town. That’s not a huge deal except that when the crew cut up the tree that was down already, they didn’t cut the roots back so the stump is sticking out of the ground at an angle. I’m going to see if I can chainsaw the roots to get it back down, probably this weekend.
You know, when you take that last paragraph with the complaints about the other help we got with the dining room, I sound a bit ungrateful. I’m not ungrateful. I’m very glad for the help we got with so many things. I just wish they’d been done in a way that we aren’t looking for more work to get everything totally finished.