This Week in Mommyhood

If I had to pick one word to describe the past few weeks it would be overwhelmed. I'm going through a period of feeling overwhelmed and feeling like there is too much to do and not enough time. It all started when I forgot about a test and only had about an hour to properly study for it. Then, Cati with her toddler coping skills called the babysitter "ugly." I felt like a huge fail; I sucked at school and I sucked at being a mom. I have tried my hardest to tell Cati that people are not ugly, instead they do ugly things and she still called someone ugly. Then, I started internalizing all the crankiness in the house and felt that it was all because of me and not giving the girls enough attention. It was a whole set of issues that led to me deciding that I need to work harder at taking a day off from everything so that I could just be with the girls.

Here are Elina's fun developments over the last two weeks:

Baby Crawler. Gone are the days of the drag-and-crawl. Elina is full-on crawl mode and girl gets around. It still strikes me as weird having two mobile kids in the house. When did Elina get big enough for crawling? The best part of the crawling is that now Elina comes to me when she wants cuddles and comfort. I also love to see her follow me around the house and the big smile she gives when she's reached me.

Pulling Up. Of course, crawling isn't enough for Elina and she has begun to pull up. She will try to pull up on everything which means there have been lots of extra tears around here as things fall when they can't handle her weight. Between the crawling and this I am back in paranoid mommy mode with all the stairs in our house.

Bye Bye Bottle. Elina has dropped to four bottles a day, four hours apart. I dropped the bottle because she was becoming really fussy with her bottles and wouldn't finish whole bottles. So in an effort to save milk and make feeding time a little more enjoyable, I decided to drop one of her bottles. I tried increasing her intake in the four bottles to make up for the lost bottle but she seems perfectly content with drinking her 5-ounce bottles.

Toothy. One of Elina's top teeth came in. Thank God for that too because I was starting to wonder who switched out my sweet, mellow baby for the cranky one that's been in our house this week.

Here are Cati's fun developments over the last two weeks:

Still Adjusting. Cati is still adjusting to school. I did not expect that, four weeks in, Cati would still be crying each morning at drop off. Luckily, she gets over it quickly and seems to enjoy herself but it still makes the mornings stressful because I know the car ride will be filled with "I don't want to go to school" and separation will be marked by crying. What makes things even harder for me is picking her up from school and having her tell me she cried because I left her.

Molars! Cati is the slowest teether on the planet. Her two bottom molars finally broke through after weeks of us being able to see them under the gum.

Emotions. Proud mommy moment here...Cati is able to label some of her emotions! I work hard on naming emotions so that Cati can "use her words" instead of reacting physically. Well, one day Elina took one of Cati's toys and instead of yanking the toy back or pushing Elina away from the toy she said (in Spanish), "Mami, I'm mad because Elina took my toy."

The girls are growing and developing and it's simply been hard for me to keep up. I just hope things change a little bit or that I at least find a way to let go some more so that I can feel a little more in control of things around here.