Two Under Two

Maybe I’m speaking too soon, but it’s mostly not as difficult as I had thought it might be. Today Ezra is twenty months old, and Elspeth will be three weeks old tomorrow. I’d been bracing myself for day after day of no one getting dressed, of sloppy, late dinners and laundry piling up and never quite making it to the washing machine. But it’s not been so bad as all that – I’ve managed to get (all of us) dressed every day, and even bathed the big girl and myself two days this school week. The bed’s gotten made almost every day, and I’ve only had to use a napkin as an emergency diaper for the little one once (although that was a matter of things being left in the car, not of falling behind on laundry). Dinner, if not quite finished every day by the time Silver comes home, has at least been in progress. I’ve even managed to accomplish a few “second-tier” chores like ironing.

The most difficult thing has been grocery shopping, or doing anything that requires leaving the house. We live in a third-floor walk-up, which is nice in some ways (our patio has a nicer view, there’s hardly anyone to walk by and look in our windows), but difficult in others. Ezzie’s big enough that she doesn’t need to be carried up and down the stairs, but she needs to hold a hand and it takes quite a long time. In her snow boots, as I learned on Tuesday, she will not do them at all (I think they might be too small for her), so that day I had to carry her – down and up, down and up, and down once more to pick up Silver from work. But yesterday, we went out just for a walk to the supermarket (not to buy anything; just for the walk), and Ezzie did fine on the stairs both ways.

Ezzie is the easiest and most difficult part of having the two of them alone with me. On the one hand, she’s been very helpful for a twenty-month-old – she (usually) loves to take wet diapers to the diaper bin, and bring me fresh ones. She can also take small things to the trash can and put clothes into the laundry hamper. She’s now pretty much able to put books back on the shelf on her own (although we’re still working on keeping toys from swallowing the living room), and she can climb into her high chair and does a good job of feeding herself (and she’s become interested in wearing a bib again, which is a blessing). She’s also very good at occupying herself – swaddling her baby doll, moving Elspeth’s clothes around the house, carrying around her bags and putting things in them. But she also loves to poke at the baby and try to pick her up and tug on her hands and feet, so I don’t feel like I can leave them alone in a room together for more than a few seconds; the bouncy seat, although a great help, requires much more attention for this reason than I had anticipated. The up side of even this problem, though, is that she’s a bit of a danger to the baby because she’s so fascinated with her – she wants to pick her up and carry her around like one of her dolls, she wants to share her food with her, and kiss her when she cries (which is incredibly sweet, even if it does usually only make Elspeth cry harder).

As I told Silver at the end of Monday – my first day alone with the girls – I think a key ingredient to having enjoyable days with them is low expectations.