Tales from the Crib is part of an occasional series of guest posts by Elizabeth Clark. Clark is a first-time mother living in Stranraer, Scotland with her husband, Steve, and her young daughter--Rosemary is nearly fifteen months old. Elizabeth is also a graduate of Central Michigan University and the University of Edinburgh--and she's Anna's sister.
Oh: And also, she expects to give birth to her second child in April 2010.
By Elizabeth Clark Appleton
Guest Writer
I am going to be a parent again. And 95% of the time I am perfectly happy about it, I really enjoy being a mommy and learning all about your new baby. It’s kind of weird too; the first couple weeks when you ‘wake up’ in the morning and feel like you are swimming under water from lack of sleep. Good times.
But the other 5% of the time, the time when Rosemary runs underneath the table to shake our standing lamp, and I have to crawl in after her; when she throws tantrums, and clings to my leg when I am trying to pay a bill, crying like I left her abandoned on a step…those times I wonder what the heck I was thinking.
I am sure it’s possible to juggle raising two young kids at once. Loads of people do it. Why, some of my not so distant relatives had a baby a year and somehow they coped. The problem is, no one has told me the secret. How do you manage? How do you manage nursing an infant and a toddler who seems hell-bent on climbing the furniture? How can you divide yourself between two needy little people, and somehow manage to stay sane?
I am hoping that for me, running will keep me sane. I know it sounds odd, but I have it all neatly sketched out in my mind—new baby due in April, I start running again in May. Hopefully I'll be running the Stranraer 10K road race in November, and then aim for running the Edinburgh Marathon 2011.
But as I have learned, personal expectations and parenting don’t always mix. I may want to run the marathon, but I have no clue where the time will be to train. I am hoping to figure it out as I go along. Which is basically what I did when Rosemary arrived—I had no clue what I was doing and we made it. Hopefully things will be the same next time around.
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