Two babies

My friend visited yesterday for a couple of hours with her two babies . I say babies , one is six months , the other is a little girl of two years . But even the elder is still a baby and her world rocked by the arrival of this new delightful thing who seems to smile at the world and what do you know , the world smiles back .
We make coffee and have flapjack and juice and get toys out and play on the floor then J sits back to try to breast feed baby ...... Little Rose strides off purposefully to D s room next door and calls out Mummy ..... silence .... Yes Rose ..... Mummy , you can't see what I'm doing now ..... J looks worried but continues to try to relax and feed baby , happy but hungry . Silence from next door but a slight scuffling ..... Mummy you'd better come and see what I'm doing now ...... J shuffles anxiously ..... I hesitate , uncertain whether we should hurry through , Mummy now I'm in the papers on the desk ...... Mummy now I'm climbing ........ another long silence . J indicates that she can tolerate no more and perhaps I should go through . Little Rose is perched on the back friendly chair ( how did she climb up there ) moving paperweights around and shuffling receipts , otherwise amusing herself quietly but clearly longing for an audience .

I wonder how on earth any parent of more than one baby manages anything , for any length of time , without going crazy , or just dropping with exhaustion . How do you split yourself between two competing people with different needs when they are little and don't understand that its not that you don't want to try , its just that it's not possible .

I dream of apples , it seemed all night long .