Night of girls

Now that the little girls are getting a little more manageable for one person, I'm trying to let MWH work late one night every other week, (or every week if he really needs it). Tonight was the night. We had fun!

I started the night early, as I had Mary Poppins bring T (20 months) and K (2.95) home early. Then we went and got food and ran around outside for a while (with Mary Poppins). After that, the girls and I came home and it was easy because the girls were happy to be home (since they'd had a dinner adventure), happy to take a bath, and then happy to watch about 30 minutes of this movie with me.

The movie is cute, but not educational. I usually try to do just educational TV, but MWH read about the movie and rented it from NetFlix. He watched it with them the other night. I have only seen about 1/2 of it now, and it is sweet. It's got a few parts that scare K, but nothing that is too scary. The movie even gets T engaged, and she never watches TV. We girls were having fun hanging out. I hadn't even gotten the girls in bed when MWH came home.

I am hoping that by spending some extra time with T that she won't wake up howling at 3 am for Mommy like she did last night... "I want Mommy...." (Imagine the most incredibly sad voice saying that.) I went and got her when she started crying (because it sounded so pitiful) and I tried to get her to go to sleep in bed with me. After an hour of getting poked and kicked non-stop, I put her back in her crib. She did her sad chorus of "I want Mommy, don't want that (crib)..." for about 40 minutes. I felt horrible that she was so sad, and I couldn't sleep until she finally fell asleep, but I couldn't have slept at all with her in bed with me. (Poke, kick, rinse, repeat.)

Miss T usually only wakes up howling when she doesn't get her RMDMQ (required minimum daily mommy quotient). For her, the minimum is about 4 hours of Mommy a day. Yesterday, I would have gotten at least four hours with her, but she slept in late and I didn't see her before I left for work (usually we get about an hour before I leave) and then took a late nap, so she was alseep for about 1.5 hours of the time I usually spend with her in the afternoon. When she was asleep, both times, I did worry about the lack or Mommy-time coming back to bite me in the a#*$@&, but you just don't wake a sleeping baby! But, it bit me, and kind of hard.

Four hours a day sounds like so little time, but when you consider she sleeps for 14-15 hours a day, 4 hours a day means I get almost 1/2 of her awake time each day, so that's not so bad... The same is true for K, I get about 1/2 her awake time. She sleeps less, probably only 12 hours total, but I always get a couple of hours in the morning with K, so again, it probably works out to about half her awake hours.

As soon as my class is done, I plan to spend more time with the girls.... The class has helped me put boundaries on how much time I do spend at my other job. I just need to keep those boundaries. I think I can. I need to make sure I don't go in to work EVERY day.

Oh and on this post, Nino asked if I'd be teaching again. I will be teaching again in the Fall. A different class. I'm teaching an intro class this semester, and I'll be teaching an upper division one next (in the fall). I planned to teach the same course again, but then the chair of the department needed someone for the upper division course, and I'm qualified to do it. Plus, I like the subject. Even though it's more work to teach a different class, I'm excited to do this new class. Ask me at the end of the semester how I feel. Heh.

Okay... must end this rambling post NOW. Sorry I'm barely coherent. Maybe I'll fix it in the morning.