I am exhausted. Utterly exhausted. Just plain old tired. This last week has been one event after another filled with sleepless nights and restless babies. I am just drained. I think that most moms can relate to the whole tired thing. Babies have spurts where they sleep wonderfully though the night and then weeks without sleeping for more than an hour at a time. Although baby wakes up smiling with wishful and expectant eyes, ready to play, mom is ready for a long nap.

The last few weeks, both the 18 month old and the almost 8 month old have had some rough nights. Since my husband doesn’t get up with the kids at night because he “needs to sleep to be well rested for work tomorrow,” I have spent the nights bouncing between crying babies rooms – always with my fingers crossed that this will be the last visit until it’s time to wake up. I can chalk up my baby’s sleeplessness to teething. The Princess hasn’t actually cut any teeth yet, but I am fairly confident that they are going to make an appearance at any moment. My Little Man has 4 molars and 3 front teeth pushing through. Poor baby was just in pain and probably scared. So, they have had some pretty legitimate reasons to need some extra lovin’ at night.

My husband would snore though the night and ask me the next morning how the kids slept. I finally have just gotten to the point when I say “fine” while I am pouring a mug of coffee so large that with two cups I will have successfully ingested a full pot of coffee. He wonders why I am cranky. He wonders why I have no interest in lovin’ up with him. He, like many other men, just doesn’t get that I am so completely exhausted that I am barely functioning. A bit of help would go a long way in marital bliss in this household.

Then Sunday night the kids started sleeping and my inability to sleep kicked in. I knew that my brother wasn’t feeling well, so I spent the night worrying about him. Turns out I was right. Monday night he was admitted to the emergency room and spent the next week there. His poor face was swollen to the point of him being unrecognizable. He was in pain and not quite all there, if you know what I mean. I spent half the night in the emergency room with him, waiting to see where he would be transferred to and if he needed surgery. I only went home because my husband called to say my Princess was awake. (Nice – poor husband was called to nighttime duty and immediately called me back home). I spent the rest of the night worrying and the next few days balancing the house work, kids and trips to the baby sitter with being with my brother at the hospital. To top the week off, we get a call from the bank regarding credit card fraud, a visiting Grandpa coming to help with hospital duty (which was great – except for the fact it threw my babies into a random mode of confusion, unknown and temper tantrums), a car with a blown radiator, dealing with the details of a new business transaction for our family business, and tying up lose ends of a job I just resigned from.(another long and dramatic story). Too much going on. Too little sleep. No support. I am tired.

Between the lack of sleep leading up to the hospital, the stress of a very ill little brother and just day-to-day family stuff, I am just exhausted. My husband still tells me as he walks out the door to run errands – leaving me at home with two cranky babies, no car and personal exhaustion – that he is ready for some lovin’ up when he gets home. Who is he kidding? Does he not get to he has left me to deal with not only raising his children, taking care of an ill family member, and the house and business all alone? Does he not get that I am just too tired to even walk? I don’t get it. I guess it is just another example of how different men and women are when it comes to processing information and dealing with different life events.

All I want is help. I want someone to support me a TINY TINY bit. I want to sleep. I want to take a two hour nap every day (just like he does). I want someone to help me with all the aspects of my business that I don’t want to do (like, I do for his business) And when I mention I need help – I get the look of “I do everything . . . you are a stay-at-home mom. . . you have all the time in the world.”

Again, I am at the point where I am just disappearing. Making the decision to go back to school and get back on track was really just making me come alive again these last weeks. Now, I am back to square one. Too tired to do anything. Maybe I’ll luck out tonight and the Princess will only wake up once and I’ll get some much needed sleep. Then, maybe I can pick up and charge forth again. Until then. . . take a nap for me~