I have concluded (as I'm sure everyone else did long ago) that I'm a terrible person to have as the webmaster of a website. I never have enough time to properly maintain them, as poor Tom and Dave can attest. Not to mention Paul and the rest of Puzzlebox. The poor Puzzlebox site hasn't been updated in forever, and Paul has actually written several journal entries that have not made it onto his Puzzlings page becuase I haven't gotten to posting them for him. I haven't done any art in ages, and I keep feeling like I'm not doing right by the boys by getting so exhausted and burned out and cranky. I never seem to have any time to get anything useful done...

What's been up? I went to a Moms of Twins meeting tonight, where we had a cookie exchange (no, I didn't bake, so I didn't take any home, which is much better for our diets). We bid on various mystery gifts which were for raising money for a needy family with twins; this year it's a single dad with twins who's working full time and having a hard time making ends meet. I can't imagine how he copes alone. At least his kids will have presents for Christmas. And we all chatted and told each other to stop feeling guilty for not being perfect supermoms, or feeling like one child was getting more attention than the other, or feeling like we were just barely coping and being too cranky with the kids to really enjoy them. Funny yet reassuring how universal that guilt was.

I managed to make some time lately to sew a Santa suit and a set of Santa hats for the club; they'll get used on Saturday for the kids' Christmas party and hopefully in years to come for other Christmas parties the club puts on. Actually, my family helped make them, and not all of it would have gotten done without their help, so I owe them. Well, I do anyway, but you get the idea. We had a nice Thanksgiving at my mom's, and luckily I was the only one who got violently ill on the drive home afterwards. Still don't know what caused it, but it's over. 'Course then I had a bad headache the next day, and then my back went out after a too-enthusiastic rowdy play session with Casey. That's getting better too, though.

I guess the biggest thing to happen lately is that I've gone and done it. I've gotten the boys set up for part time day care, two mornings a week. They went for the first time on Tuesday. I hung around for an hour and a half or so, to get them settled in. Within ten minutes of our being there, Casey took a spill on the concrete and scratched up his nose. I was standing about two feet away. At least it happened when I was there; if it'd happened when I was gone and I came back to find my poor baby all skinned up I would have been a lot more upset! The boys did pretty well overall; Riley played well with the other kids even when I was gone. Casey had a harder time; he cried after he discovered I'd left and Debbie (the child care lady) carried him around and held him and loved him (as she says) and he eventually fell asleep in her lap. He was still asleep when I got back about an hour and a half later. Poor little guy.

As for me, I went and drove around to try to distract myself, running many busy errands in that hour and a half. Got a lot done that I couldn't have with the boys along, all in a very distracted state of guilt and anxiety, wondering if they were doing all right, constantly reminding myself, "she said she'd call if either of them got really upset or anything...". It was a relief when the time was up and I went back to pick them up. They were glad to see me, but not overly clingy, and once we got to the car they seemed quite content to get in their car seats and go home. And they proceeded to go down for a nap without any fuss, and were very good the rest of the day. Then today they were really good too. Hmm.

Guess we'll see how they feel about going back there tomorrow morning. Debbie warned me that Casey may not want to go back and may cry some; and she said since they're only going to be there part time, it may take them as long as a month to get to the point where they run happily to the door to go to daycare. I'm really not sure I can handle them crying and leave them there. The whole thing really brings up a lot of conflicting emotions for me. Am I doing the right thing? Isn't the interaction with other kids and adults good for them? Is it common to feel so guilty for not being able to do it all myself? Can I really trust someone else to take care of them with as much care as I would? Does it make me a terrible parent to foist them off on someone else for part of the time? Didn't I make a committment to taking care of them when we had them?

Finding a day care center was a lot harder than I anticipated, partly because they boys are under two and not potty trained yet. But I did a lot of research on places, checked out a number of them until we found this one we both felt comfortable with. So it's not that I don't think Debbie isn't qualified or can't do a good job; we did enough background checking that we feel confident of her. The problem is with me, and it's hard to hand over my two little guys, even for a little while. Hope I'm not totally off my nut about all this, but it's just a hard thing to do. I'm betting we'll all adjust just fine to day care, but it's a milestone in a number of ways and I'm not at all sure I'm grown-up enough to handle it.

Most recent journal entry

Previous journal entries:

10/24/2002: October
9/24/2002: Deep Breath...Savor the Moment... Whew.
8/20/2002: San Francisco:Traffic and Hills
7/22/2002: Summer Grunts
7/9/2002: Thank You Excedrin
6/15/2002: Father's Day and Junior Policemen
5/8/2002: Time Insanity
4/9/2002: Good Friends and a Weekend Getaway
1/30/2002: Runaway Day
1/19/2002: Ready to walk
12/16/2001: Ornaments
12/6/2001: Galpals
9/25/2001: Flags
9/7/2001: BabyBabyBaby
8/9/2001: Moving
6/25/2001: Sleeping through the night
6/21/2001: Why Website?