Third Culture Kid(s)

I’m sorry I’ve been AWOL for a bit - things have just been (predictably) crazy around here and computer time is at a premium.  So, another bullet points update:

• We registered MM for preschool in the Fall!!  It’s only two mornings a week, but she’s so starved for human contact and play outside the confines of our small home that she’ll do fine, I think.  Unfortunately, we had to drag her out of the place literally kicking and screaming yesterday, since the toys and the prospect of other kids was just too tempting.  Poor kid.  Since it’s the preschool my SIL and brother send their daughter to, we can hopefully get together sometime to take the girls over to the playground, at least.
• After talking it over with M., I’ve decided to see what kind of progress I can make on the dissertation by the end of the summer before giving it up completely.  I posted asking for advice from other ABD parents on a board I frequent, and most people said that they couldn’t have written their dissertations without outside childcare.  Now, M. and I are ::thisclose:: to paying off our car loan, and I’ve been looking forward to putting that money towards paying off our remaining credit card debt for a long time.  If we were to get childcare, it would mean postponing that indefinitely, and I just don’t want to do that.  But, on the other hand, I don’t want to give up my dissertation just yet, either.  Happily, one person commented and said that, for her part, she’d done the whole thing without childcare and with two kids who were roughly the same ages as mine when she was in the thick of it.  It was a very encouraging post, with a lot of emphasis on “don’t beat yourself up for what you’re not doing right now,” which helped a lot.  I do know, in my rational mind, that very little is going to get done while C. is nursing every two freaking hours, nighttime included, and while MM is waking up at 5 am every day, but I guess there’s a reasonable expectation that this state of affairs won’t last forever.  God willing.  So, we’ll see where things are this summer; if no progress has been made, I’m out.  If I’ve made some tangible progress, I’ll keep going.
• Speaking of sleep, or lack thereof, well, we just don’t get any around here anymore.  Not quite sure what to do about this.  The toddler seems to have decided that 5 am is a good time to kick off the day, while the infant shows few signs of giving up his every-2-hours feeding schedule.  He’s nearly 2 months old - isn’t it about time he stretched out the time between eating already???

And that’s the long and short of it right now.  It’s still too cold to get us outside right now, and I’m still very wary of the flu that’s going around, so we’ve been cooped up in the house for what seems like an eternity.  I feel too tired to do anything constructive or interesting with MM, so she’s bored, I’m frustrated, and C.’s, well, hungry.  Things aren’t bad, they’re just kind of trying.