mayhem

Today has been One of Those Days. It started off with the house being a disaster. Not that it's normally pristine, but the amount of stuff obscuring every horizontal surface had reached a new high of mayhem.

I had way too little sleep due to a soiree yesterday, and went from harried to hectic to frenzied with very little provocation. Samuel, bless his little self, slept beautifully last night, which meant he was bright-eyed at six. I dragged my sorry butt out of bed, knowing I had a busy day - I had signed up for a meditation retreat. Talk about irony. I spent the next two hours dashing around getting Samuel's breakfast, preparing his lunch for later, laying out his clothes for the day, entertaining him, feeding him breakfast, feeding the cats, getting lunch for the sitter, mixing up a bean salad for the potluck at the retreat, along with the usual shower and breakfast for myself.

I packed Samuel into the car and drove over to get the sitter (my niece) - by now it was 9am and he was thinking about a nap. I left the two of them with only one false start - I had to go back to get the breast pump so that I wouldn't explode by lunch time.

The retreat itself was wonderful, except that I mostly just wanted to sleep through it. At lunch, I realized I had brought the breast pump but forgotten a bottle, so it was useless. I decided to try and stay for as long as possible, and lasted until 2:30 which I thought was pretty valiant, considering my breasts were very annoyed with me and let me know about it. At least I didn't leak all over my host's living room floor, but my Guru devotion meditation consisted of "should I leave now? No, I can wait. No, I can't wait. Yes, I think I can wait. I really should stop thinking about whether I can wait." and more along those lines.

Arriving home I learned that Samuel hadn't slept while I was gone except for 20 minutes in the morning. This meant he was short on 2 hours of sleep, which did not bode well for the rest of the day - a visit to my brother's for a noisy, busy family event. Samuel held up fairly well, until we got home. What else is new.

Then it was lots of crying, refusing to eat, me trying to feed the cats, Daisy cat stealing food from Brandy cat, me locking Daisy into the basement, Brandy peeing in the plant because the basement door was locked - actually off the edge of it which is a minor blessing since the floor washes and doesn't smell perpetuually of cat piss as the dirt would have. What else? oh yes, Daisy cat eating Samuel's leftovers AND the rest of Brandy's food while I put newspaper to soak up the pee, Samuel crying because I forgot to rescue the bottle of formula and it dribbled onto him, me realizing I'd completely forgotten to phone a new mom back to help her decipher why her baby wasn't sleeping (like I would know), and then bath and bed for Samuel where he promptly began to cry his guts out because he was overtired.

I just put on the OM cd (it chants OM for about an hour and is his usual lullaby to fall asleep), made sure he wasn't gassy or tangled in his blankets, and walked away. He cried for fifteen minutes and I am now having a big attack of Mean Mommy Guilt for not trying to comfort him more. I picked him up twice but that was against the strict orders from the How to Help Your Baby Sleep website. I just can't ignore his crying, though I do try to refrain from actually picking him up to comfort him. It's so hard. sigh. He has moved into his crib from sleeping in my bed, and we both sleep better for it. It's just these nights when everything is Too Much. At least it's only 9 pm and not midnight or something.