Not Again! or I Dream of Sleep

At night a little burglar comes to our door, he wrenches the gate I've wedged there away from the door jamb, lifts it over his head, breaks it across his knees and hurls it down the hall. Then he crawls into our bed and robs us of sleep by hitting his papa in the face and back and pulling my hair repeatedly to make sure none of us falls into a deep sleep for the rest of the night - heaven forbid!

So I gave up on the gate as a security measure for preserving my now most-prized possession and pastime: sleep.

We then simply told the little bugger - whose name happens to be Danny Sam, "You're not allowed to come into our room no matter what! You're too old. You're four-and-a-half-years-old!"

So last night he got up to use the potty and then staged a sit-out right outside our door where every twenty minutes for an hour beginning around 1 am he whined, "Mommy, I can't go back to sleep. I can't."

Firmly and sleepily I informed him that he must go back to sleep and on his own in his own bed, his brother being in the next bed and his stuffed tiger there to snuggle. Whereupon he whimpered, stomped to his room, flung himself against the wall and wept....until, revived - and just as I began to doze in hope - he came back to his NO! NO! I won't go! placard right outside our door and, holding it high in the dark, whined, "Mama, I tried. I can't go back to sleep! Can you snuggle me in the recliner?"

I gently told him that I could not; he is not a baby. (And to be fair, I calculate that I have spent years of my life in that recliner with sick, sleepy, unsleeping, or sleeping children.) Thus the whole whimper, stomp, and weeping phase began anew until my brain shut my body down about 2 am or so for self-preservation.

Can you guess my mood today?

Danny Sam was the first one up this morning. I'm not even sure he slept. In high dungeon I told him that he no longer has the right to disrupt my sleep at his age and that I will not tolerate it, so after using the potty he'd best just return to his bed and lie there in complete quiet until he falls back asleep. I have no sympathy, because he, his papa, and I sleep far better when we're apart.

Will this new policy work? Oh, I don't know, but I hold fast to the dream of a complete, unbroken night of sleep. My dream is there, a reality, somewhere in the future. I just know it.

But maybe it requires a steel door and ear plugs.

Weekend Bookends

I had just given birth to another baby. TMI, but I remember seeing the baby's head and reaching down to touch her dark hair when she crowned. The nurses gave her to me shortly after, loosely wrapped in some kind of blanket, and then they acted as if they were just going to leave without checking her vitals or cleaning her up.

Well, I should have known by my surroundings that this wasn't going to be a normal delivery. I was giving birth in what looked like a garage. And not a small one. No, it was one that seemed suited to car thieves dismantling stolen vehicles. There was even a huge tool crate nearby in addition to the hospital monitors at my side. The nurses were dressed in short skirts, crazy tights and tall boots, and they had glam, dark make-up on their faces. They brushed off my protests that the baby needed a good washing up, and they headed for the door - no doubt for a date with their felon boyfriends.

 

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That odd dream began my weekend. It is, I believe, what convinced me to go out to my dining room Saturday morning and sort through my toddler boy's baby photos in order to finally put them in his album. The project was arduous, but I prevailed, even filling the last several pages of our family album with a year's worth of birthdays, vacations and holidays.

After recovering for sometime from the headache of looking down for two-and-a-half hours, I then hauled the kids' white metal table out into the gravel of our front yard and unfolded camp chairs around it. My three youngest and I had a pleasantly simple alfresco lunch under the huge eucalyptus tree. There was a fine breeze, and clouds provided an enormous, benevolent canopy above. In general the weather was so gorgeous and unexpected that I swear we could see Autumn waving to us from behind a saguaro just down the street.

Reluctantly, we returned to the indoors for my Danny boy to keep his appointment with a nap. I then sent off a guest writer's submission to another site. (The anticipation of that was probably the source of my strange birthing dream.) Then I switched out the bunnies and pastels on my hutch for decorations that will hopefully entice Autumn to stride down the street in plain sight.

Of course, my kids also pleaded for the Halloween bin. I felt some of their excitement. I dreamed of stealing their chocolate bars on that ghoulish holiday as I watched them try on old costumes, turning themselves into mutant soccer-monster, pirate, vampire superheroes.

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This morning at approximately 12:38am, my Danny whispered in my ear, "Milk, Mama. Milk."

The whispers become more insistent the more I attempted to poo-poo them, so I grumpily stomped down the hall to retrieve a sippy cup from the fridge, That bought me about five more hours, and then he leaned close to my ear anew and breathed, "Mama, Max and Ruby. Max and Ruby, Mama."

Dear heavens, he was asking for television! How long had he been awake?

"NO! No Max and Ruby."

He humphed at me, and then proceeded to his sisters' room to wake them up. They were already up (at 5:30 am!), so I scolded them and told them to force themselves back to sleep. Then I told my toddler that if he wanted to sit in a dark living room by himself, so be it. I just want sleep, dammit, so I returned to my bed down the short hall to snuggle against my Man.

Presently I heard a doorbell.

"Ding-dong, Mama! Ding-Dong!"

Maybe he was being a doorbell, or maybe he was calling me a ding-dong. Lately, though, this is something he has been doing whenever he wants someone's attention, and they are not properly engaged in what he's doing or saying.

The doorbell was only going to get louder, so I kissed my bed goodbye - with tears and sad, weak waving that went on too long, and I promised we would someday be together for real.

There's nothing to do but stagger out, kiss your children and face the day, opening the curtains and praying the sun's rays have all the mood-enhancing and energizing power they're said to have.

My mood improved a great deal by the time I was driving my oldest two to school. I put on a Beatles CD and sang and bobbed along to Baby, you can drive my car, looking back at my smiling son who has not yet learned to roll his eyes at everything Mama does.

"Beep-beep, uh beep-beep, Yeah!"

Here's looking at you, Week. You'd better be a good one.

Morning Glory

This morning, to demonstrate the harsh reality of parenthood, I made up my own lyrics to an old children's tune, and my Ana, so like me as a kid, accompanied me. She's a good sport, because we sang about twenty verses really loud so everyone in the house could hear.

I was sleep deprived. Singing about how my morning went after staying up to near midnight last night like a fool (am I not aware that there are four children in this house who get up before 6am???) was therapeutic. The ditty went so:

Four bears in the bed and the little one said
Roll over!...I'm crowded
So they all rolled over and one fell out
Three bears in the bed and Danny Sam said
Roll over, I'm climbing back innnn...
So they all rolled over and tore the bed sheet
Four bears in the bed and the little one said:
I'm crowded, roll over
So they all rolled over and Danny fell out again...

Well, you get the picture. There were two kids who crept into their parents' queen-sized bed last night. This morning while still in the haze of restless, no-good sleep, they yanked on my hair and fought over who got to lie by my face, and because all of us were thrashing about, fighting for space and sanity, someone tore the bed sheet. My littlest, Danny Sammy, got up on and down from the bed multiple times while attempting to keep my hair in his hand like a leash. I slept great, but my hair is thinning.

So this morning I put frozen English Breakfast tea bags on my eyes. Then I laid on the couch with icy caffeine dripping into my tear ducts for several minutes. It was invigorating. When I got up, I asked my kids, "Do I look better? Did it help?"

"Uh, I can't really tell," said my son. "But, sure...I think..."

After I washed the brown liquid from my lids, I felt better. Half the value of beauty products and routines is that you feel proactive. The more time or money you invest, the more confident you are that things are working. You're not just waiting for Old Man Time to make you look like a scarecrow; you're being that scarecrow - with boxing gloves on. After the tea I felt so much better that I smeared glitter eye makeup into the not-fine lines on my eyelids. I even put chunky statement earrings on my droopy earlobes. I was ready to face the day and defy my accrued years of spending supposed-to-be-sleeping hours in a recliner, on the floor by a crib, on a Sesame Street toddler couch, and, when very lucky, in my own bed - but always with the imminent threat of invading children.

One must face the day regardless, and I faced it alright, looking ready for the fall - a glitter-faced, bejeweled, smokin-hot scarecrow.