Lessons in multi-tasking...

Sarah and I had a very busy workday scheduled today. We had two rather substantial reports to complete and send out. Thursday is supposed to be one of Sarah's kid free days for work. But guess what? The babysitting plans partially fell through. Big brother's babysitting plans were still on, but the twinklets had no where to go!!

Sarah and I were bound and determined that we could handle the girls and get our reports completed. Upon arrival, Malone stayed in her car seat since she seemed pretty mellow and happy. So Sarah placed Malone next to her. On the other hand, Ripley or as she is affectionately called The Ripper arrived at the house demonstrating how she came by her nickname honestly! Since Sarah still had things to add to her report, I took Ripley. To keep Ripley chilled out you have to rotate her positions and activities. So since I had the invoices to complete as well as a few other miscellaneous things, I started out by crossing my left ankle over my right knee and placed Ripley in the triangle that I created. This way I can feed her a bottle one handed and type one handed if I have to. Plus since both she and her sister are much more alert more often, she can see my face sitting this way for some interaction.

While feeding Ripley, Malone decided that she was hungry too, but Sarah was able to prop the bottle up in the car seat so that she could continue typing and every once in awhile the bottle would fall out of Malone's mouth and need to be repositioned. We got to the point where we had a pretty good system going to where for the most part we could rotate the girls between us and continue working. Both girls stayed awake most of the morning until Ripley finally conked out near lunchtime.

At lunchtime we grabbed the appendices for our reports and packed the girls in the car. We dropped the appendices off at the copy place to be copied while we went somewhere for lunch. Ripley slept all through lunch. Yahoo. And Malone kinda dozed and periodically threatened to fuss. Lunch was fairly quick and thankfully uneventful. We picked up our copies and headed back.

Unfortunately, once we got back both girls were ready for a bottle. Once again, Malone had the propped bottle. The propped bottle doesn't work with Ripley since she's too much of a wiggler...so Auntie Renee had bottle duty while Sarah typed cover letters...and I proofread Sarah's report while feeding Ripley. Only one hand needed for editing!

Report binding time finally! Ripley finished her bottle, but was both gassy and fussy. So she stayed with me for the binding process. Whenever either she or her sister are gassy, I lay them across my legs on their tummies. And I either pat their backs or since I'm a fidgeter by nature...I fidget one or both of my legs so that they get a little bouncy-bouncy action. Malone happens to love this position and quite often will fall asleep like this. Okay each report to be punched and bound was about 2.5 inches thick....so lots of punching on the machine. Since Ripley was on my lap, I couldn't pull my chair in all the way so I had to reach some to punch the paper! Ripley kinda just grunted and threatened to fuss while punching and binding the first report. In the meantime, Malone decided that she'd had enough of the car seat so Sarah carried her around and went back and forth between the computer and printer.

After finishing binding the first report, we traded babies since each was bored and beginning to fuss in whatever position we each had them. So I took Malone to lay across my legs and to let her do her swimming motions. Once I placed her across my legs and started fidgeting she was happy as a clam, and Ripley was happy to be back with mommy and no longer on her tummy.

They both cooperated pretty well while I bound the last report and Sarah put the cover letters on letterhead. Yippee I finished my task and started on the mailing envelopes when both Malone and Ripley decided that it was meltdown time...which means for Sarah and me time to switch babies! Ten more minutes and we got everything done. Yahoo we did it and I for one really can't believe it! We really had a lot to get done and just finaling a report takes time even without babies to juggle and entertain.

Neither one of us got frustrated and really we both knew that if the girls didn't cooperate as well as they did that the reports would have to wait or I could have finished them after Sarah left. But we managed to get the mix just right and kept the girls entertained and fed. It's actually kinda funny how we managed to get an unplanned rhythm going with both the work and the girls. I know that my adrenaline was zooming all day. I felt like that I had such an excess of adrenaline with the day's challenge that I went for my hike/run as usual just to burn it off. And believe me it's burned off and I will sleep very well tonight!

So today was challenging indeed and in a weird way kinda fun too. It certainly broke up the monotony of a routine work day, and we did get everything done that we needed to! So I think we gave new meaning to multi-tasking today, and we proved if there's a will there's a way!