In Conclusion

Posted on 6/10/2009 by cheesefairy

Someday I will probably come out of Fresco’s bedroom *not* squealing, “Oh my fucking god” and grinning like a madwoman, but it probably won’t be this week.

There has never in the history of the world been a child more ready, willing, and able to learn how to sleep than Fresco. And there has never in the history of the world been a parent more surprised that within one week he has gone from a terrible to a fantastic sleeper than me.

Well maybe Saint Aardvark. It might be a tie.

I was thinking a while back about the whole “if you talk about it, bad things will happen” parenting superstition that I subscribe to. You know: my baby hasn’t pooped all day / oh now I told the Internet, my baby won’t stop pooping. I realized something that is probably obvious to people more steeped in logic than me and that thing is that: by the time you feel comfortable mentioning some (usually child-related) thing that has changed, enough time has passed that the thing is about to end / change again anyway.

Example:
Your baby is napping. Your baby never naps. You sit around for a while (45 or 90 minutes, say) being amazed by this and then you decide to send your partner an email about the amazing napping baby. As soon as you hit “send” the baby wakes up.

Superstition:
The baby somehow KNOWS that you hit send and woke up just to spite you and make you look stupid. God I hate babies.

Reality:
The length of a baby’s nap is exactly as long as it takes you to relax enough to want to tell someone about it.

In the spirit of this, I waited well past the day when I felt comfortable telling the Internet that my baby was cured of his bad sleeping. I waited an extra four days. People, it has been SEVEN DAYS and the child reads some books with me, nurses a bit, pops a soother in, turns out his light and I put him in the crib and he lies down and doesn’t bother me for 11 hours.

Being me, I am working on making that 12 hours but you know.

First night: 1 hour 20 minutes of crying (we went in every 5 minutes to reassure but not pick up)
Second night: As-long-as-it-takes-me-to-make-a-gin-and-tonic of crying (hint: not very fucking long)
Third night: Cried till I closed the door.
Fourth night: No crying.

It’s a goddamn miracle is what it is.

I do feel like I have found religion. Partly because of the textbook response from a baby I thought was far from textbook and partly because I have had seven (7) nights of full, uninterrupted sleep.

And so, like any zealot, I am crowing. I already crowed over here at the Canada Moms blog * and now I am crowing here too.

Please don’t hate me because I am crowing.

Even if it all goes to hell tomorrow, I will have had this week, this glorious week of night time sleep and regular naps, gifts of minutes that add up to hours that I used to spend rocking and cajoling and nursing back to sleep and placing *just so* on the crib mattress. Yes, even if it all goes to hell tomorrow, I will have had a week without this huge boulder on my shoulders. The anxiety that comes from listening to the monitor in case the baby wakes up and you are back on duty, the total demoralization that comes from saying “tired” every time anyone asks you how you are and knowing you are a Dorothy Downer but being unable to say anything different because ow, you are, it is, the tired, one and the same, sorry but.

I am singing again like a bird trapped too long and finally free again in the shady jungle.

In fact, we all feel kind of just like this:

* Yes, I am still writing there. I had forgotten too. Then I remembered and it had been so long I panicked and solicited advice from people about whether I should just quit because obviously I don’t have it in me, etc. etc. and then I decided to wait to decide until after we did the sleep training and lo, behold, I was sleep deprived and depressed and now I am a GOLDEN GOD ™ and can conquer the world.

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Oh Lately, It’s So Quiet

Posted on 6/5/2009 by cheesefairy

There were moments today when I forgot that my second born son is the Loud One. He says a lot of “dat” and “gah” and “nahnahnah” but when his older brother is not around, he feels no need to yell any of it.

Not that his older brother is the cause of the yelling. An older brother is someone who was there first, who has marked this territory, who has been peeing on your mother longer than you’ve been alive. How are you going to set yourself apart, little brother? How are you going to make sure they don’t leave you in the corner to teach yourself how to crawl while they giggle over old videos and trim the older brother’s toenails with a pair of safety scissors. On you they use a rusty knife. You know you have to make your case.

Trombone is away, on vacation at my parents’ house and Fresco and I have spent some time, one-on-one, without the clamouring of schedules and those pesky Other Peoples’ Needs. Clean diaper, shoes in the bottom of the buggy, hat in my purse, let’s go. We’ll walk till we want to stop. Greet the cats at the cat lady’s house. Amble. Have some water. Splash in the water park. Swing until you don’t want to swing anymore. When it’s time to go, the 13.5 month old doesn’t know how to protest. He just goes with the flow. If he objects, hand him a stick. By the time he has figured out he can’t consume it, you’ll be home drinking a cold beer.

It is delicious to only have to meet the needs of two people, one of whom doesn’t ask for much, just a quick internet check periodically and a good cup of coffee or two. It is easier, too. And so, less shouting. By the kid, by me. Less mauling of my limbs.

When I talked to Trombone on the phone yesterday, his voice sounded so young. He is only not yet three. I do miss him, the real him, not the him that I spend every day with but the him that I used to spend every day with.

And then I went and read this post and I realized that I can spend time with him, just him. And I should. And I will.

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Everything is Fine, Nothing to See Here.

Posted on 6/4/2009 by cheesefairy

Last night: he slept eventually. Right now: he is not napping. But earlier today, we had fun:

I am going to clean that bathroom mirror RIGHT THIS SECOND.

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Sleep Should Be A Pleasure For All Concerned

Posted on 6/3/2009 by cheesefairy

Looking down the business end of a long-awaited three days of sleep training Fresco I found myself waffling this afternoon. He’s really a very good, very happy baby, I rationalized (can you call it rationalization if it is entirely irrelevant?) while making some tea. Hardly a bother at all, I thought.

Falsely, I might add. I think falsely that he is hardly a bother at all. A worthwhile bother, yes, but he is a bother. And he was napping at the time. Absence, fond heart, etc.

We have planned this well. Trombone is at his grandparents’ house till Saturday. We have no sickness in the house. Fresco’s immunizations last week went fine; he appears to be between bouts of Crazy Fucking What, Now? behavior and I am the only one who can tell this but it’s true, his normal behavior skates pretttty close to the Crazy Fucking What, Now? line but the true Crazy Fucking What, Now? behavior is about a week past.

The only possible better time to do this would have been about 6 months ago, before he became such a person, such a little walking, talking, gesturing, grudge-holding, contrary person. But if I could go back 6 months I’d probably keep going, back to about 2002. That was a pretty good year. So let’s not fool with the time travel.

It is dreary even to type. Every night he goes to sleep at about 7 pm. Sometimes 6:30. Sometimes it takes 15 minutes to nurse him to sleep. Sometimes we have to wrestle for 45 minutes. Sometimes I have to leave him in the crib, walk away while he screams, come back to hold him tight until he passes out, 5 minutes later.

Then he wakes up at 9. Or 10. Or 8. Or 11:15. Or all of those times.

He averages 3 wakings a night. He gets up for the day between 5 and 6, but sometimes I have to nurse him back down at 4:30 and he sleeps till 5:10.

It’s the inconsistency that kills me. Is killing me.

He has forgotten how to put himself to sleep – the last time he did it was September, I think? Or October? He has to learn again. I hate to fuck with the status quo, even if I am dissatisfied with the status quo. What if it gets worse? How could it get worse. How.

It’s like right before you get dental work. Your teeth feel fine. You know that after the dental work you won’t be able to chew for a week on one side. Your mouth will be frozen for an afternoon. You’ll have that headache from the drill. I can’t SEE the hole in my tooth right now. It isn’t causing me any pain. Why fill it? Let’s just leave it. Maybe it’ll – I don’t know – fill itself?

And maybe a few days go by. And then you’re out for a Sunday drive and you stop at a roadside ice cream shop and you take a lick of some ice cream and suddenly you are in this horrible, terrible pain and you think dammit, why didn’t I get this tooth filled. Now I’m out in the country on a Sunday drive, licking ice cream that causes me pain and I can’t get to the dentist.

I don’t want to do this. I think it is going to be incredibly hard. The child is willful. He likes what he likes and does not hold with the rest. He is a born protester. Plus, he has just learned to give kisses and has spent the day being gooey and charming and kissing everything, especially me, these adorable little puckered-lip-smooches. Every time I go back in that room and don’t pick him up my heart will break a little more.

But I do want to do this. I want to stop having to intervene in every nap at the 45 minute mark. I want to spend less time in the rocking chair, waiting for him to be asleep enough to put down in his crib. I want to not wake up to his cries in the night, thinking it’s 3 am, being crestfallen because it’s only 11 pm and 3 am is yet to come, knowing I will probably be up then, too. I want him to go to sleep at bedtime and wake up in the morning. I want to be DONE for the day when I am DONE for the day. I want him and Trombone to share a room so we can have our spare room back.

If wishes were horses –

I would ride mine around the countryside and stop for ice cream.

Instead I will stay and sweat in the city and just hope like hell that this plan of ours is a success.

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The Stay at Home Mom Thing

Posted on 5/27/2009 by cheesefairy

I got a letter yesterday telling me that my job has been staffed.

No, not this job. I didn’t hire a nanny. My real job. What I still think of as “my real job;” the one I hated and felt trapped by and escaped.

The news was not a surprise. My paid maternity leave ended in April and I am currently at the start of two years of unpaid leave, which makes my job available. I did it that way on purpose; my maternity leave replacement really wanted my job, god bless her, and I really wanted her to have it. Now it’s her job and I don’t have one.

And when I go back to a job, it will be a totally different one. Thinking about that yesterday evening made me feel kind of dizzy, like looking down from a high bridge. It’s fine, I know I am safe – a position with my employers is guaranteed – basically, I am like the janitor of the government and there will always be garbage bags to change – but to be Without A Job is hardwired in my brain to be a scary thing.

I mean, yes, I have one. But I think of this, (gesturing around the house) what I do all day, as work. I am working from 6:20 am till 7 pm. It’s not a job. A job is something you do for the money.

I am not making any money. Except for the childcare benefit dollars from the government to pay for our beer.

I am trying not to spend any money, either, now that I no longer have an income.

Of course the distinction doesn’t end with money.

Work is something I do because I have to, because I am compelled to, because there is a greater good beyond it. Work is generally harder – on many levels – than a job because I care. When my office job was hard it was because of this, because I cared and thought that I was doing something good and because I never, ever, ever got to see results that reflected my input.

Oh except the one time I rewrote an application letter for someone and he got into the school of his choice.

Which was not part of my job description, by the way.

Taking care of children is a total gong show a lot of the time, at least the way I run it, but at least you see results. I guess taking care of small animals might be the same. I am basically a monkey wrangler.

Maybe it is the end of my paid leave and thus my beginning a life where my job and work are the same which has made me so determined to keep the house clean. Or maybe I have just been in the house full time for over a year now and have some measure of time with which to assess the objects scattered around our kitchen. That quarter-full jar of almonds has been on the shelf above our kitchen cabinets for one year now. That sort of thing.

Before I had such a chaotic lifestyle, a little chaos scattered around me was tolerable. (OK, a lot of chaos scattered around me was tolerable. I was always the one in the office who had to be told to tidy up before the Big Honchos came to visit.) But now everything is so noisy and volatile and, just, caked on and it feels like I might get pulled under and turned into a Chaos Monster if I don’t keep the kitchen counter clean and sweep the floor at least twice a day.

(Although the compulsion seems to be limited to the ground floor, where we do the most living. My bedroom, while filthy and bothersome, is not likely to be touched anytime soon because whenever I am in it, I pass out.)

File it under: things I scoffed at before I became a parent, along with scented baby wipes.*

Along these lines, I came across this blog post yesterday and it made my heart sing a little.

* you know, even through Trombone’s first couple of years of life & diapers I scoffed at scented baby wipes but somehow having two toddlers eating a variety of foods created a Maximum Manageable Smell Level in our house the next day, shall we say, so this one time, it was a heavy flow day for the kids, if you will and it turned out I had scented wipes on hand quite by accident and suddenly, as I wiped, the terrible smell was gone. And I did rejoice for the scented baby wipes, although I haven’t bought them again because I think I am playing at being a smell martyr.

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