how many hours in the day?

I'm behind with the blog. I'm behind with a lot of things in my life. I keep looking (glancing very briefly in the two minutes I have after kids-in-bed-clean-up-kitchen-put-away-toys-collapse-on-sofa-and-moan, and before bed) at these crafter's blogs and they depress me. Some of these people have kids too, and where on earth do they find the time to not only sew scraps of fabric the size of my thumb into life size sculptures of Barack Obama, but take photos and blog about it? Seriously. Mitch said these folks and olympic athletes make you realize there are a lot more hours in the day than you're taking advantage of. So here's my short I've-already-cleaned-up-the-kitchen update:

Mitch finished his dissertation! And defended it! And passed! Oh it's a good life. It's been a long long long time, and though it's his PhD, I will take any congratulations offered. It's my success too! I suffered! Tomorrow one of the neighbors is having us and some other folks over for a surprise celebration--how sweet is that? (It's a good thing Mitch doesn't read my blog :) I got a Duke-colored ice cream cake today and stashed it in the neighbor's freezer.

The anxiety is okay for the moment, as is my patience level. Today we played hooky from Music Together class simply because I didn't want another day with a schedule. Instead we went to the post office where Frances said she could carry the big package because she was a "big girl". Then we went and bought some green rain boots with turtles on them. While she napped I put the baby on my back and raked the yard.

When dad got home things deteriorated but that's not new--maybe I'll write about that later. She's in a real needy phase and wants dad's attention when he comes home; she hit the baby while Mitch was changing his diaper. After her time out she couldn't seem to get it back together and it was meltdown after meltdown until bedtime.

I've got the baby going to sleep on his own!! Used to be that he had to be rocked to sleep (I'm well aware of the mistakes we made early on) and now I've retrained him. We have a whole (short) bedtime routine that involves putting on his sleep sack, turning on the sound machine, reading the very same baby faces book and holding his bunny. He cries for about 60 seconds and then passes out. I'm so proud of myself.

That's all I can do for now. I want to write more exploring this motherhood thing; I think a lot about it and talking with my counselor is helping enormously. He pointed out recently that it's hard to feel successful about it since their needs are bottomless. Good point.