Bedrest Date Night Sabotage

So yesterday I began to be hopeful that I would actually get a "date night" with my husband only to be sabotaged....you see our last date was New Year's Eve, which was shortly before I got put on bedrest for this current pregnacy/baby due in June.  We did manage to get two quasi-dates last month when we had friends take our oldest two children to the two high school musicals being performed in town....we had just the youngest two and managed to feed them first and have the tv "babysit" them while we ate dinner by ourselves-enjoyable, but not quite the same thing as "complete alone time."

Well, yesterday the eighteen month old took her nap early-from noon to one and the toddler only slept for forty-five minutes so I began to be very hopeful for "early bedtimes."  Then I began to be even more hopeful because the oldest two children decided that they didn't want to get along with each other at all...you know the kind of days where if one says something is green the other kid will insist it is blue just to argue?....so daddy said, "Early bedtime for both of you...."  I then realize that the hubby had even been able to sleep in earlier in the morning so there was potential that he would be able to stay awake past his normal bewitching hour of ten o'clock....So, the oldest two go upstairs and I almost have the toddler asleep, but the baby is losing her mind....so I stop and work on the baby....the baby falls asleep....I start cuddling the toddler to sleep....she accidentally bites me as she is nursing to sleep and I in my reflex moment smack the toddler...so the toddler is crying and mommy is crying....and the baby wakes up......Even as the reality of my hopes start to die I am insistent....I still try to get the toddler to sleep as the eightteen month old baby begins to throw an actual all out temper tantrum-we're talking throwing toys and shoes that were on the floor-the works....daddy works on "holding her to calm her down..."....then I realize the toddler is starting to poop so daddy scoops her up to take her to the potty.....we give them snacks and finally at 10:45 decide that we just have to all go upstairs to "lay down to sleep".....devastation....I realize that I had been emotionally "counting the date(eggs) before it had hatched....."

By 11:30 the toddler had finally fallen asleep, but the eightteen month old, soon not to be "the baby" anymore, was still going strong....What I had done wrong that day?  Sugar-negative....late nap-negative.....where did all this endless energy come from?  (If its from a darwinian instinct to try to prevent another baby from joining the family it's about eight months too late....)  Hubby decides to go check on the chicken coop because he could hear some coyotes yapping and he had just moved the baby chickens and ducks out of the brooder into the coop....finally the baby hasn't moved in ten minutes....so maybe I can talk to the hubby as he is falling asleep....the house door squeaks open.....the baby sits straight up and says "Dada" and points at the door...she remains sitting up until daddy joins us in bed at midnight....

As the three of us were finally falling asleep sometime after midnight I realize that maybe the babies just miss their daddy as much as I do during the week....some day I will miss the feeling of a soft baby body curled up next to me....some day I will lie awake worrying about the children as they make their own way in the world.....but tonight I got to have the "frustration" of this kind of "sweetness of home"......the sweetness of falling asleep listening to the deep breathing of my sleeping husband and child....and there is always the hope of another "bedrest date night" sometime during the next two and a half months....

When I finally do get to go away in July for a date after the new baby is born though I may not come home for a few days.....I mean the sweetness of home is always magnified when one has been away for awhile....:)

Always,
Stephanie