Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Reality Calls

My time off work is nearing the end, and my thoughts start moving towards the routine to follow. There are the basic immediate concerns. How will the first week back go? What can I do help Andrea stay rested? Do we have enough help built into our next few weeks via preschool and other programs? What will the over nights be like? How will my runs fit into the whole picture?

The list might go on from there... I just want to make sure that the long list of immediate day-to-day "survival mode" things don't detract from the long term picture. And when I say long term picture, I'm not talking about just the kids. But Andrea and I as well. One thing you can lose sight of EASY when becoming parents, is to remember - you're not JUST parents. Although we might love our roles as Mom and Dad (despite the hard work right now), we are still Shawn and Andrea. And yes, for some odd reason, we are still madly in love. So what do we want for each other in the next 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? I can rattle off hundreds of answers to those questions for Megan and Casey, but what about us too?

It may be premature to be thinking about those things now. Tonight I had to care for both Casey and Megan for a measly 2 hours, and it nearly broke me. Luckily, I called my Mom over who did an AWESOME job with Megan. She totally saved my ass, because Casey embraces the "witching hour" and was quite grumpy/fussy/hungry tonight. Honestly, I've been so focused on Megan's new bedtime routine, that I haven't realized how rough Casey is from 7-10pm.

Hopefully it stays that way, and is only bad like that from the 7-10pm time frame. I should be home for that time period to help out, and if things work out as planned, Andrea and I can take turns during that period, with the other parent doing the bedtime routine (or game, as we call it) with Megan. Ahhh surviving the first 3 months, how the memories come flooding back.

No comments: