Category Archives: Sleep

..or lack thereof

Warning: Heavy on the caps lock.

Posted on by

So okay then. Here we are. Again. Us and all that awkward distance between posts. Lets just pretend it never happened, and deal with it in therapy later. See? Now isn’t that easier?

I made the mistake of showing that holiday slide show to the kids, and do you know how many times I had to watch that stupid thing? DO YOU? Like 15. Even when I tried escaping to another room, I could still hear the soundtrack. I may never be able to hear those three songs again. Like, ever. I have decided that I need a special vault wherein I can deposit all the music, books and videos that I have been subjected to endure on endless repeating loops. First would be Mama Mia (she ruined it for me forever), that dorky Tootle the Train book (the story doesn’t even make sense!), and let’s not forget the deliciously annoying Wonderpets Save the Effing Nutcracker. What is it about kids and their borderline inhuman ability to enjoy something just as much the 347th time as they did the first?

As payback we started throwing away all their toys. Ok, not really. But sort of. As we began the yearly holiday toy assimilation process it became increasingly clear that our inaction on ever doing a substantial toy purge was impeding our ability to reclaim our own living space. We did a roundup of clothes, toys and other miscellaneous unused items and donated to Porter’s school, the local thrift store, the local animal rescue shelter and I will shortly be shipping off a gargantuan stockpile of stuffed animals (we actually kept as many as we are giving away) to a contact in the Army Corps of Engineers deployed in Iraq who – with a couple of others – is distributing them to the children there.

It was unexpectedly easy to bring the kids on-board with our plan, considering that – for completely different reasons – this type of activity is not their strong suit. Stella’s inability to effectively process any and all feelings of nostalgia are always a source of contention between us. The conversation is usually one-sided and sounds a little like this: “But Mooommmmm! I love this broken plastic dog cup that I got at that fast food place when I was three years old and remember it was raining and remember we saw that rainbow and remember then we all laughed and hugged. Don’t you remember? How could you ever make me throw this away? I need to sleep with it every night.” This, the toy that has been buried in the bottom of a tote bin for the better part of the last two years.

On the other side of the conversation is Porter. He throws a fit because that is line item number one in his current job description. Porter is going through one of those stages right now where CONTRARY DOESN’T EVEN BEGIN TO DESCRIBE IT. I could offer him a bowl of ice cream and he would refuse it simply on principle. What principle? I HAVE NO IDEA. To further complicate matters, Steve is his unequivocal favorite. Why do I know that? BECAUSE HE TELLS ME. I am not even exaggerating. True story: we were standing in the kitchen last night and Porter comes strolling by Steve and I. As he passes us he nonchalantly tosses out an ‘I love you daddy’ and keeps on walking. I look at Steve, then at him and offer, “I love you Porter” His answer? “No. I like Daddy.” And this happens ALL THE TIME. He won’t let me read to him before bed, he won’t let me put him to bed, and in the middle of the night when he is screaming for someone to come get him because he hates his bed, who do you think ends up dragging in there to rescue him? ME, that’s who – only to be greeted with, “Nooo! I want Daddy!”

New Year’s resolution #1: Win back the love of my son. Use bribery if necessary.
New Year’s resolution #1.a: Devise plan to undermine husband’s appealing nature.
New Year’s resolution #2: Buy a vault.
New Year’s resolution #3: Get more massages.
New Year’s resolution #4: Master the Wii ski jump.
New Year’s resolution #5: Use the Caps Lock key less.

Bunk Mates

Posted on by

After months of threatening, and weeks and weeks of researching, we finally made an impulse decision, and bought the kids a set of bunk beds yesterday. We ultimately came to the realization that they are BUNK BEDS and not a set of heirloom Chippendale end tables, and went with the $299 version we found at a local furniture store. They fit our minimum criteria of solid “not dark” wood and were convertible into separate beds, for that moment when Stella starts complaining that she caught Porter secretly snooping through her text message log and whines about having to share her room with her like totally lame younger brother.

If I would have written this last night I would have expounded about the effortless bedtime ritual. Tonight, on the other hand, required a licensed counselor. Stella missed her old bed. Porter required not one, not two, not, three, but seven or eight bedtime rituals before he was content to voluntarily go down for the night. By the time we were finally able to leave their room without subsequent screaming, it was almost 9:30pm.

Right before Stella went to bed last night I reminded her where the stairs on her new bed were and told her that if she had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and couldn’t find them to just yell for me. I would much rather deal with the inevitable night waking than the middle-of-the-night-sheet-changing. And so, at 4:55am I heard the call, and was (moderately) happy to heed the call. The unfortunate downside to this predicament is that she woke herself up enough to have difficulty getting herself back to sleep. Finally, after three return visits, I insisted she just get into bed with us so that I could get another hour of sleep. Steve was already up and surfing the internet by the time Porter shuffled out of bed, and so I suggested he climb in with Stella and I. That lasted all of about seven and a half seconds before all three of us were up and ready for the day.

I am fully prepared for the fact that for tonight and many nights forward, I will again be summoned as a middle-of-the-night bathroom wingman. It’s not like it is anything new, considering I have to make the usual nocturnal runs for the single purpose of standing sentinel while she attends to her business. This is, obviously, the earliest form of the Female Group Bathroom Run. And I guess all I can say is, “Don’t worry Stel, I got your back.”

Porter: The Cute vs The Angry

Posted on by

Hey McGoo,

Big surprise, but I managed to miss my arbitrarily set, semi-regular post wherein I tell you how adorably cute you are and relate my amazement at how you can elevate angry to a level not commonly found in nature. Otherwise known as The Cute and The Angry, respectively. So instead of me telling you about The Cute and The Angry at 18 months, I will be doing it at 20 months. And later, when you are relating to your therapist how you can only find your happy place by hiding under your desk at work, you’ll think back to this moment and know why.

In our household, your 18-month birthday meant one thing: cheaper child care. Meaning that, instead of going obscenely over-budget every month, now we can just go grossly over-budget. Although the day-spa we send you to really does a very nice job of fanning you with palm fronds and catering to your infinitely short fuse, I still find it somewhat depressing that our monthly child-care costs rival the GDP of a medium-sized country. I guess this is nature’s way of preparing us for the high-priced, private college tuition you will be draining from our account in about 16 and a half years.

Aside from becoming less expensive, you actually have been showing us signs that maybe, perhaps, OH GOD PLEASE, your actual communication skills might be developing enough to begin diffusing The Angry. Don’t get me wrong, there is so much more to you than The Angry. But buddy, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but the reality is that you have gotten quite a reputation for using tantrum-theory as your go-to method for conflict resolution. Generally speaking, The Angry results from one of the following two scenarios: 1) You don’t get what you want, 2) No one will make the air stop touching you. Both are equally explosive, and both take a significant amount of diversionary tactics and bribery to diffuse.

Let’s take for example yesterday, when I had to endure an endless barrage of The Angry because I would not give you some of my coffee, and in an attempt at reconciliation, offered you some trailmix instead, only to be yelled at all over again because I wouldn’t let you carry the entire bag around the house with you. This is my life. My life where I do things like cut the crust off sandwiches and bribe you with candy. The kinds of things that, in another life, I would have judged with all the harshness of a person who hadn’t had her will broken by a toddler. Wait, make that a toddler and his smarter-than-her-own-good older sister.

Because of your intense desire to do EXACTLY what your sister does, we have had the volume of our lives cranked up to 15. On a dial that only goes to 10. The simplest of issues – without fail – digress with a true grace and elegance. Which is none. We have pretty much given up trying to make you drink from a cup with a lid. It usually works fine for a little while, but eventually you are guaranteed to get distracted or lazy and eventually drench yourself and your surrounding area with milk, or juice, or whatever other consumable you have convinced us to give you. You won’t sit in a booster seat, high chair or any other appropriate height accommodation unit. Instead, you stand. You stand in the bathtub, you stand at the kitchen bar, you stand at the dining room table. Little did I know that when I requested your father construct us a dining room table with benches, I was, personally, sealing my own fate. Dinner in our household consists of all four of us sitting on one side of the table with you pacing up and down the length of the bench, stepping over and on us whenever you decide you want to pick off someone else’s plate. And, usually you are doing it all shirtless because I can’t get you to wear a bib, and it is easier to clean spaghetti sauce off skin than it is to clean it off a beige polo shirt.

But no matter how much of The Angry you unleash, I can now say the following words: We, as a household, are sleeping. All night. Almost every night. It is a beautiful thing. I am sorry there hasn’t been more fanfare, more ticker-tape, more tequila-themed celebratory dinners, but it is one of those things you don’t want to say out loud, lest you permanently jinx it forever. And this Coke machine, it rocked. Sleeeeeep. No Sleep. Sleeeeep, No Sleep. Then, there was a week, and another, where I would dare to go to bed at the scandalously late hour of, say, TEN O’CLOCK gambling that you wouldn’t be up 3 more times throughout the night.

And it gets better. Better than sleep, you say? Oh yes, better. In the last month or so you have begun communicating with real, live actual words. The kind that the rest of us use. The sweet beautfil words that will form the bridge between The Angry and The Cute. And more and more come every day. Enough, that I have a blindingly optimistic hope that The Cute will become the over-riding theme for all posts to come. And rainbows and unicorns will be the new theme of this site. And all my words both in print and in real life will be shades of pink and purple. And the glorious harmony will reign supreme! Ahem.

To any outsider, it may not seem much. The gist of our conversations with you consist of you saying something that we can vaguely understand, us repeating back what we think you want, with you giving us an affirmative “Yeahuh” or the usual “NOOOOOOOOOO!” For example, last night at dinner there was this exchange:

You (screaming): “NOOOOOOOOOO!”
Your father: “Porter, would you like more milk?”
You (screaming subsiding): “Yeahuh”
Your father: “In this cup?”
You (calmly replying): “Yeahuh”
Your father: “Are you going to spill this one too?”
You: “Yeahuh”

See? Not much. But to know where we are coming from, it is like witty repartee amongst friends. You are at a place now where we can get you to attempt a repeat of just about any word we ask, and I have even gotten you saying “yeesssssh” instead of “Yeahuh” to everything. It is such clear and tangible progress, and something that is helping me on those days when I worry that instead of making the “Bring on the Cute” t-shirts, I will be needing to commission a “Save me from The Angry” tattoo.

I took a couple of video clips showcasing some of your cooler tricks of late, because really, with you, it is all about The Cute.

Anatomy Lesson

Zoology Practical

Another weekend at the Walston Labor Camp

Posted on by

This weekend we removed and disposed of 3,380 pounds of green waste.

To clarify: the “we” being Steve, myself and the latest round of suckers visitors, Steve’s parents. Consider yourself warned: if you come to our house with the intention of “helping” you will be automatically issued a project, a Walstonling and your very own bottle of ibuprofen. Come to think of it, our house has become much like that of the Hotel California: You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

You see, in our day to day lives we are deprived of any sort of productive activity that doesn’t involve the counseling or redirection of two emotionally volatile children. So you can understand how it is that we lose our ability to think rationally when it comes to getting to focus on actual task oriented activities. Activities that can be accomplished without having to stop every 5 minutes to keep someone from, say, drawing on an inappropriate person or thing with a Sharpie pen, or hauling the contents of the sand table into the kitchen.

The name of the game this weekend was berry abatement. As in, gone. Period.

We started with this:

house

house

And ended up with this:

house

house

As a matter of course, we all also ended up looking like this – basically, like we have been in a scratch fight with a badger:

steve

Not only were our guests kind enough to deal with the daily toil of yardwork, but they were also here to experience the magic and wonderment that is time-change-sleep-transition. I can say with some certainty that the idiot who came up with time changes DID NOT HAVE CHILDREN. This household already gets up at dark-thirty. Now, thanks to the lame time change, we get up an hour BEFORE dark-thirty. So not only did Bill and Judy get to give up a perfectly good weekend wrenching their backs and pulling their muscles and being ordered around by Porter the Angry Dictator, but they got to have the equivalent of the WWE in their bed by 5:00 a.m.

As I have been reflecting on all the work-vacations people have been providing lately, I think I have realized that we are missing the bigger picture here. One of my former professors from school started a B&B where people come to get the “farm experience”. As if. I remember thinking it was the most ridiculous idea in the world. What crack-smoking maniac would pay to go on vacation and actually pay to work? Oh. Well. I think I have just answered my own question.

Gerd, the newest member of our family.

Posted on by

Okay. So here’s how it shakes down.

Porter is about this close to becoming a pharmacological poster child. I took him to the doctor this week due to a seemingly endless list of symptoms. A list that was punctuated with the item CRYING, LOTS AND LOTS OF CRYING (yes, all in caps). When the doctor asked me to explain the symptoms, I told him to get his pen ready, ’cause this was gonna take a while: teething, fluid in the ears, persistent runny nose, lack of appetite, intermittent goopy eyes, sleeplessness, throwing up, CRYING, LOTS AND LOTS OF CRYING – did you get that last one? Of the whole list, he immediately zeroed in on the one thing I have begun to take for granted – the throwing up. He said that chances are pretty high that he has GE reflux, also known by the ridiculous sounding acronym GERD. (Yes, Sharan, I know you already told me this.) He prescribed heartburn meds and said that we can probably attribute just about every item on the list, save teething, to the reflux. The remaining symptoms, he quickly surmised, are allergies. The give-away: his skin. Both of my children were lucky enough to inherit their father’s lizard skin. And in the world of relationships, apparently, eczema and allergies are like peas and carrots. With one, comes the other. And there you have it.

Final med tally: 5 [Dimetapp, Zantac, Cortizone Cream, Ibuprofin, Anti-bacterial eye drops]

…which may allow me to finally discontinue my self-prescribed med list of alcohol, caffeine and M&Ms.