1 Kid versus 2 Kids

I titled this post 5 weeks ago and didn't get any text into the post. That almost says everything that I'm about to say.

I remember back before kids, I thought I was busy. Then I had Ella and thought oh this is busy; I was not busy at all before.  Then Ella gets older and it gets easier and you forget how hard it was at the beginning. Then you have your 2nd kid and BOOM it's so different.

When you have 1 baby, you can just nap in the middle of the day if you actually get the baby to sleep. With one kid if your baby won't sleep unless you are in the quiet and holding them, you can just do it.
With 2 kids, you have to do all the baby stuff and do all the toddler stuff. It's so exhausting. It doesn't help when your 2 year old loves her baby brother and always wants to hug and kiss him. Then he doesn't like this so he starts crying just when she gets near by.

I've heard a lot of people say they had to baby wear their 2nd child or nothing got done. Most of the time, Miles does not let me wear him so then I struggle even more.

I've brought multi tasking to a whole new level.  I was icing my knee, eating, and driving. These are easy to do at the same time but before I wouldn't have thought of it.  I was also bathing Ella, nursing Miles, and eating at the same time.  Both of these examples are from the same day. I just try to think of what I can do at the same time now because there just isn't enough time.  Days Ella is at school are a lot easier but then I don't get everything done that I need to/want to.

When I have to be somewhere, I start preparing 2 hours early and so far I've only been a little bit late. It's hard to get myself dressed, Ella dressed, Miles dressed, and everyone fed before we leave. Sometimes nursing is a 5 minute session but it never fails that when I want to leave he wants to nurse for 20 minutes.

I don't get to benefit from Miles's longest stretch of sleep because Ella is still awake for 2-3 hours of that stretch. I can't go back to sleep each time I get miles back to sleep because Ella will wake up so I get even less sleep there.

It's after midnight as I type this and I should be sleeping but don't want this to keep sitting around.

It is so nice to see how caring Ella is. She told me to be patient with Miles when he was crying once.  Sometimes when Miles is crying in the car, Ella gets really sad. She doesn't like that he's crying. She's starting to be more accepting of it.

Ella tries to be really helpful she's just too little to actually be able to help so I have to be on my toes.

I still can't believe I managed holding Ella and baby wearing Miles. I also did this while trying to take group photos. They turned out like crap though so holding a crying toddler really does lower the photo quality.