Capable vs Whiny

We came back home on Wednesday afternoon after a trip to Tesco to stock up on groceries. It was a full car load - 3 adults, a toddler and a baby. Stuffed everywhere were groceries, baby equipment, frozen milk, clothes and everything else brought for the one-month stay at my parents' place.

Got home and faced the daunting task of unpacking, cleaning our long-neglected house, changing bedsheets, getting toddler and baby settled in, feeding baby on a 2-hour schedule, putting away groceries, getting dinner ready. Hubby neglected to mention earlier that he had a dinner appointment. Oo-kay. I shifted to Capable mode and multi-tasked. Wasn't easy... Jo Ern alone was a handful. She was excited at coming home and was very active - asking questions, climbing everywhere, requesting to play things/eat things/do this/do that the whole evening and night. Su Ern wasn't used to the new environment, cried and had to be carried a lot. Even with the help of the maid, I was exhausted by bed-time!

Bed-time (this time without maid) was another challenge. JE couldn't sleep, SE kept screaming. I carried SE around the room and JE followed me around. I tried to keep SE quiet by feeding her, JE got up to see what I was doing. She was actually very tired. She requested help at one stage... 'Mummy, need pat-pat'. Poor girl! It was over an hour before lights were finally out at 11pm. Phew.

Luckily I was in Capable mode. It was like being at work - "Deal with crisis A, ok do this with crisis B, crisis C can still wait, now how are we doing on crisis A etc". Me in Whiney mode would have been "Lousy hubby went out to enjoy himself and left me with all the work! And maybe cry angry tears". Heh. *proud of myself for handling situation*

OK Thursday hubby only came back past midnight. I had been trying to get the girls to settle down for two hours without success. It was 2.30am before everyone got to sleep. This time I shifted to Whiny mode. Heh.

We may be small but we can be a handful!