A wee bit chaotic.

by Ashley Weeks Cart

It’s been a rather ridiculous couple days chez Cart. And Irene had little to do with it. We were fortunate in that it felt like just a severe rainy day, complete with lots of movie watching and cookie baking. The power went out for a brief 90 minutes, right at dinner time, so we ordered pizza and bedecked the house in candlelight.

Let me just say that while all of this could have been incredibly romantic for me and James three years ago, it was anything but 2 weeks postpartum with a toddler tearing around the house. Queue visions of all of our worldly possessions going up in flames.

I will say, however, it made for some adorable 2-year old moments, as Sunny delighted in singing “Happy Birthday” every time she happened upon a candle.

Priceless.

The power came back on just as the wind picked up steam, which meant that Addison refused to sleep alone in her room “cuz of the wind.” We saddled her and the infant up in bed with us, thanked the mattress gods that we had opted for the Cal King when making our recent purchase, and attempted a family slumber party.

Let’s just say that very little sleep was had. The girls are in sync, and as soon as one would fall asleep, the other would awake. One would poop, the diaper would be changed, and then bum rumblings from the other would commence. At one point I awoke to Sunny’s head by my butt with her feet on James’ face. It was THAT kind of night.

And to top it off, Ursa has learned to escape our fenced in yard. Which she now does whenever she’s outside. We’ll think we’ve found the hole, fix it, and lo and behold, we’ll receive a phone call from the neighbors that she is romping in their yard. She’s like a freaking raptor.

The only other time she’s behaved like this was when Sunny was an infant. I’m going to go ahead and say that my dog, the dependent who was an only child for five plus years before we introduced another needy, living being into the household, is very clearly expressing her frustration and disapproval with Courtland’s appearance in our home.

The toddler? No problem.

But the damn dog. Oy vey. Remember this? And then this?

So now we have to monitor the dogs every second that they are outside, which means that when they want to pee at 6am, we can’t blithely let them outside and go back to bed until a more reasonable hour, because they will inevitable fly the coop during that period. Yes, I say they, because Hanna has now learned from Ursa that it’s super funsies to slip under the fence and scare the shit out of me and James. As though this household needed any more crap.

Literally.

Fortunately, Hanna is so unbelievably dependent that when she escapes, she runs to the front of the house and waits by the car for us to discover her absence and let her back inside. Ursa, on the other hand, likes to take a little trot around the neighborhood before coming home. She’s always gone just long enough to send me into hysterics and give me panic attacks about enormous monster trucks flattening her just yards from our house.

Because there are totally monster trucks that cruise around our neighborhood.

The timing of all this could not be worse given what little sleep James and I are managing. We are lucky to get a straight 3 hours on any given evening. We are both like zombies roaming the house, except that this is unacceptable to Miss Addison who demands that we take at least one proper “venture” (i.e. adventure) a day.

All of this is to say that I’m living in crazy town, and that’s okay, because that’s just how life is with a newborn, but this is about as coherent and substantive a post that I can muster.

James is recounting his perspective on last night, because that is how he and Courtland entertained themselves from 2-5am when the wee one decided she did not want to sleep. Story telling.

Thus, you’ll be hearing James’ tale shortly.

Now I’m off to do lines of ground coffee beans. Because that sounds like a totally brilliant and reasonable idea.