Two Weeks with Two Under Two

It's been all right so far.

Probably much aided by the fact that Baby #2 will sleep at night for four hours at a stretch, and that SCT goes to the crèche 3 days a week. Thank you France and your affordable childcare, because the days when I have two at home are full-on to say the least.

Yesterday, for example, we went to the park. I drove there, because SCT wants to take her bike everywhere and I can't manage the two of them plus the bike out in the street. (Also, she loves the bike but gets tired of actually riding it very quickly!) It took us two hours to get everyone up, fed and dressed, then I put the baby in the sling and the nappies and changes of clothes in a rucksack,convinced SCT that I couldn't carry her down the stairs, so she would have to walk, collected the bike, loaded everything into the car and off we went. When we arrived, it was the whole process in reverse - baby in sling, jacket on over baby, bike out of the boot, toddler out of the car, bike helmet on toddler, convince the toddler to walk and haul everything across the road to the park.

We had a lovely morning and got back just as the baby was starting to get cross about having her nap continually interrupted to transfer between the sling and the car seat (I stopped off to post a parcel on the way home, so we'd done it seven times in total). I attempted to feed the baby but she'd decided to go to sleep again so I popped her in her Moses basket and started to cook lunch, at which point I was starting to feel that I was winning at parenting. SCT had taken her trousers off, as they were muddy from the park, and was running around in her vest and bike helmet. I could see that her nappy was starting to look a little bit saggy, but figured it could wait a little longer.

Then, just as lunch starting to simmer away, I heard an "Uh-oh" from SCT and turned round to see a little puddle on the floor with one of her feet (still in socks) in it, and a big wet patch on her vest. It turned out that the nappy wasn't saggy because it was getting full, it was saggy because it had come unstuck.

At which point the baby woke up and decided she was hungry after all. You never win at parenting for long.

But by mid-afternoon, they were both asleep and I was catching up with admin one-handed on the computer and eating chocolate as the baby snored in my arms, and everything was under control again ... for a while.

So far, things have gone pretty much as I expected, apart from the fact that the baby's wonderful sleep only happens if she is right next to me - put her in the Moses basket, even right next to us, and she will wake up every half hour. This is fine at night, as we just have her in our bed (I'll happily make a rod for my own back if it means I only get woken up once in eight hours), but in the daytime, my only option is to put her in the sling if I want to get anything else done at all. And while I have no objection to this in principle (it was always part of the survival plan), I hadn't reckoned on just how tiring it is to carry a baby, even one which only weighs 3.5 kg, around all the time while simultaneously looking after a toddler who still needs lifted into her highchair, her cot, her car seat and all the play equipment in the park, as well as removed from places like kitchen cupboards and prevented from playing "going for a pipi" (basically flushing the toilet) multiple times a day. Especially when your stomach muscles are a round wobbly blob after nine months of pregnancy and your back hasn't quite recovered from giving birth yet.

Luckily, UFM has taken a few days off work (thank you France and your generous holiday allowance) so I'll only be carrying around one of them at a time for the next little while!