I Can Do This. Probably.

I want to take a minute and congratulate myself. 

Go me.

I’m alone in the house with the two girls (this is only the second time that this has happened, and yesterday it was only for the amount of time it took my parents to go to a very streamlined Ash Wednesday mass) and I’ve managed to feed Margaret, read to her on the couch while I fed Ellie until she went to sleep, and pack Margaret off for her nap, leaving Ellie in the newborn napper attachment of the pack n’ play (the one in the living room that is intended to keep her safe from Margaret’s inquisitive paws).

Thusly (although this is a picture from yesterday, since I didn’t take a picture of Ellie before I went in to put Margaret down, and then I sat down on the couch and downloaded pictures and began searching for inspiration for posts, and this one just sort of happened.  It was actually meant to be a congratulatory aside before a post on Ellie doing tummy time, but it kind of grew).

Also, apparently extra ears aren’t just for clothes anymore. 

Margaret, while not asleep, is lying in her bed reading either her orange book or her green book (both are Ina Garten cookbooks with the dustjackets off.  She loves them.  I don’t know about this, particularly since she reads them in the dark).

And I am sitting on the couch blogging.  This might be manageable.*

*Honestly, it wasn’t a completely smooth experience today.  Margaret discovered that she could climb up onto a chair and hurl herself over the back onto the couch, in a lovely simulation of the game she and Leo play at night, called “Plop on Couch.”  This is bad enough in and of itself, but was made worse by the fact that the part of the couch that she was plopping herself onto was the very part I was sitting on to nurse Ellie, which meant that a) Ellie’s head was the first thing in the line of Margaret bombardment and b) my hands were occupied in holding Ellie, which made it hard to catch Margaret.  We went through 3 time out cycles (unsuccessful) before I thought to MOVE THE CHAIR.  Which fixed the problem, until she wakes up and figures out how to move the chair back.