Two for the Price of One...

This has been an interesting week. A friend of mine ran into a situation where he needed a babysitter for his 4 month old daughter while he worked and asked if I could help out. She's a sweet little girl--very good natured--and still pretty much at the sleep, eat, poop, and sleep some more stage, so I agreed to look after her for a few days. For the most part Alivia did very well with it. She did exhibit a little bit of jealousy in the form of patting my leg to get my attention a few times when I was busy with Mia, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I guess she still retains some memories of the orphanage and so is a little more amenable to sharing her mommy than she might otherwise be. The only other thing I noticed was that she woke up crying in the night after the second day of sharing me with Mia--something she hasn't done since her very first night with me after leaving the orphanage. Today we were back on our own again, though, and Alivia seemed quite herself. I was really worried that we might see some regression, but I think we came through it okay.

After this little experiment I have to give props to the mothers who manage to juggle multiple babies on a daily basis. It can really be exhausting. I don't even want to think about trying to go out to the store or anything like that with more than one. It seemed like I'd just get one settled for a few minutes and I'd have to pick up the other one for something. Thank goodness for morning and afternoon naps! You can't imagine how delighted I was that it rained here all morning this morning and the steady pattering of rain on the roof and the darkness from the cloud cover made Alivia sleep in a bit. We both needed the rest after the last three days!

The other thing I managed to do this week was paint and install some cute little shelves in Alivia's room. We now have a place to display some keepsakes from her Russian heritage. I'll try to get some pictures tomorrow and post them here.

~ Jeana