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The Bug takes after her father in almost every possible way, save the crazy hair, the monstrous feet AND her absolute, passionate, deep-seated hatred for waking up. Rousing her from slumber is akin to clubbing baby seals or throwing me in an enclosed space with a room full of Teletubbies. Evil. Pure and simple.

Watching her wake from a nap is a truly painful process, as she screams and writhes and throws an utter tantrum, all while her eyes are tightly sealed shut like that of a naked mole rat. She fights the forces of consciousness with all her might, struggling to remain in a restful state despite a hungry belly or wet diaper ripping her from such peace. It reminds me of a typical morning when I need to be awake before, say, 10am. I groan, grumble, weep, fitfully wrestle with the sheets and pound on my alarm clock as though it were a time machine that can magically rewind the hours so that I may remain in bed. I, too, hate the forces of a hungry belly and wet diaper. I mean… what?

It ain’t pretty folks.

We both have similar tendencies in the evening hours. too. I am a night owl. My best, most productive hours are between 10pm and 2am. I love the still, the peace, the quite of that time of day. Nothing distracts me or deters me from my course of action. While I don’t think that the Bug perceives this hour in quite the same fashion, she certainly adores being awake during this time. And LORD, if you try to make us go to sleep at a decent, acceptable, humane hour,  you shall pay a hefty fee. We will toss and turn and moan and groan and generally lie awake miserable for hours on end. In the Bug’s case, that means lots of singing and pacing the house for James, and in my case, that means James has to listen to an earful of complaints as I fight with my insomnia. Because clearly I should not have to cope with my sleep issues alone. NO! James must be alerted of every awful, miserable, restless moment. How fun for him!

No amount of Nyquil, Tylenol PM, or shots of whiskey seem to cure my wakeful state. And Sunny hasn’t taken to those remedies either. DRAT! You’d think they’d have a stronger effect on her wee, infant system.

Moving on…

The upside of all this is that the Bug and I are on the same page. And so our mornings are always slow to start, as we prefer to lounge around in bed, napping here and there, slowly bringing ourselves to face the day. There are some mornings, like today for instance, where it takes until noon to fully rouse us into functioning members of society. While at the time these hours of snuggling and resting are utterly glorious, they inevitably come back to bite me in the ass.

This is what I get for staying in bed until noon like I’m a 16 year old boy recovering from my first hang over (or just any day from my collegiate career).

See, when we stay in bed for over 12 hours at a time, even if it is interspersed with many a wakeful moment, the Bug REFUSES to nap. I mean, she’ll dose off during our 20 minute jaunt at the park, and maybe zonk out for 15 minutes in her swing, but the usual 2 hour period of rest and thus productive time for moi is OUT.

What I’m saying is: Today was essentially a wash. During the brief 15 minutes Addison slept, I managed to shower and clothe myself. Granted, that’s more progress than some days, but still, no pumping (as we know that THAT doesn’t go smoothly when the wee one is awake), no blogging, no uploading photos, no reading for school, no preparation for James’ birthday and our anniversary that fall back to back and occur in less than two weeks (WHY OH WHY did I think it was a smart idea to fuse the two?! WHY!? This problem is forever. F-O-R-E-V-E-R).

But when she awoke, I HAD to finish prepping dinner for a gathering this evening, and I needed to eat lunch and manage a few other things before getting on the road to said gathering. So I decided to multitask, because women have super human powers in that regard.

Today, not so much.

I’d read about women who breastfeed their babies in the Sleepy Wrap, and while I failed to believe such a feat possible, I decided it was high time to try it. I could feed the Bug, hands free, and be mobile to boot. After tangling wrapping myself up in the 8 million feet of fabric that is the Sleepy Wrap, topless (because the babe needed access to the boobs, obv), I awkwardly side-saddled Sunny into the contraption, somehow slid the nipple shield in as well and waited for the magic to occur.

Nothing.

The Bug just glared at me in horror as if to say: No way, no how are you dangling me above the ground in a sheet of fabric and expecting me to eat while you go about your daily business.

I gazed in the mirror and we did, in fact, look ridiculous. Her limbs and my boobs were sticking out every which way, and the wrap was draped around me like a kid in a toilet paper mummy contest at a 13 year old’s Bar Mitzvah. I thought about documenting such an image, but decided that that shit did NOT need to be immortalized in the world of the Interweb.

And of course, because that’s just how karma likes to play me, in the middle of this nonsense, a UPS man appeared at my door to deliver a package for which I needed to sign. It would have taken far too long to untangle the mess I’d created, so I begrudgingly answered the door with a traumatized baby hanging off my topless person all while swaddled like an ungraceful Gwyneth Paltrow a la Shakespeare in Love. I tried to avoid eye contact with the man, and signed as quickly as possible, before cursing any and all nimble, able-bodied women who have successfully multitasked thanks to breastfeeding-with-babe-in-wrap and made claims that a person like myself might similarly accomplish such a feat.

I did, however, polish off my evening milking myself like a cow WHILE reading about the missing feminist revolution in sociology.(The irony does not escape me, thank you.) This task was out of necessity, as classes begin tomorrow, but it goes to show that I have not completely lost my ability to multitask.

Unfortunately, I have lost my mind.

It wasn’t until a rowdy group of teenagers walked past the front of our house and I heard one of them gasp in horror, “Oh my God, do you see that chick in the window. EW! What the hell is she doing?!” that I realized I was pumping in a very well-lit room at the front of our home by a window, that while obscured by a lacy cover, was not entirely opaque to the outside world.

Multitask fail AND brain fail. Today was a doozy.

It’s okay mom, I still love you.