In light of the horrible tragedy in Pakistan, it seemed important to remind myself that for however difficult life can be with a kid, I cannot possibly imagine how hard it would be to continue living without your kid. My heart breaks for those families.
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A new feature where I sum up my thoughts on parenting, in, well, 5 words or less. Please join in if you feel so inclined!
It had to happen. I knew at some point I’d break down and write about the “S” word, because the utter lack of it is a theme common to most (all?) new parents. It’s absence hovers over us, a constant grey cloud, reminding us of a time when things were much more simple, a time when it wasn’t so hard to obtain. For 16 months and 11 days I’ve waited patiently, obsessing over my desire for it. I’ve tried everything to bring it back into my life. I’ve read books, spent countless dollars on specialty clothing, purchased hours of tailor-made music designed to help set the mood. Recently I’ve taken to incorporating aromatherapy into the bedroom, out of sheer desperation to find something that works. Each night, I go through the same routine, hoping that this night, this one night, it will happen, because I need it. “Oh please, please little baby. Please just sleep.”
Truthfully, I’ve been on the fence about writing anything regarding sleep. When you are so sleep deprived it takes you 30 seconds to figure out which end of the shampoo bottle shampoo comes out of (true story), it is hard to put anything together that doesn’t just sound horribly whiny. Also, there are already people who have done it, and done it very well (for those of you who don’t already know the blog How To Survive A Sleep Thief, check out the post I’m referring to here; it is brilliantly funny, and perfectly sums up everything I wish I could say about living with a kid who doesn’t sleep, but can’t because it took me 30 seconds to figure out which end shampoo came out of).
In case you were thinking, “maybe her shampoo bottle is confusing?” let me show you a picture of my shampoo. Not exactly a brain buster, under normal circumstances.
So what made me do it? Well, for starters, I’m delusional. With tiredness. Because the last time I slept through the night was back when the words “North West” and “One Direction” referred to parts of a map, rather than a bagillionaire toddler, and a handful of post-pubescent weasel boys ruining music. And lately, little Baby 1.0 has decided that getting up 2-3 times in the night wasn’t enough, and has increased it back up to 5 times. 5. Times. A. Night. Little reminder, she is 16 months. Being plunged back into the thick of what is essentially newborn level of sleep deprivation, I am reminded of a few things:
Pick One Direction, and head that way, away from me, forever.
1. Removing regular sleep from your routine changes who you are on a fundamental level. For example, I turn into a crazy asshole when I don’t sleep. Like, seriously, a totally crazy asshole. Case and point? This morning, after another absolutely brutal night, I spent no less than 12 minutes hunting down a fruit fly who landed innocently on my arm, and when I finally got it, I smashed it with a smile on my face, like some kind of insect serial killer. Did I have to invest 12 minutes of time in hunting down a solitary fruit fly? No. Did I have to smile when I killed it? Big time no. But No-Sleep-Emily is currently the captain of this ship, and she is a scary asshole.
This is me, the morning after another sleepless night.
2. When I don’t sleep, my mind turns into a garbage disposal of thoughts which A) immobilize me, preventing me from completing any kind of task, further perpetuating my garbage disposal tendencies, and B) keeps me from falling back asleep. Usually, somewhere around 3am after Baby 1.0 wakes up for the umpteenth time, my mind does this: I need to go to the store and get dinner food. We need to eat healthier. I need to buy more vegetables. I need to buy organic. Organic is too expensive. I need to get a job. I don’t want to have someone raise Baby 1.0. I need to socialize Baby 1.0 more. I NEED TO STOP THIS. I will count until I fall asleep. 1, 2, 3, 13, purple, I need to email every single person I know, urgently. I need to clean out my email inbox. I need to vacuum. I need to clean out the litter box. I need to order cat litter. I need to order cat food… AND IT GOES ON AND ON.
This is my brain at 3am.
3. Being horribly, hideously, sleep deprived makes me feel like I have the worst hangover of my life, but nothing makes it go away. Well I can’t say nothing, because I have a sneaking suspicion a couple of vodka tonics would do the trick, but I haven’t entered that territory since my bachelorette party where I peed (basically) in the doorway of a Walgreen’s, while leaning up against a newspaper box. My head aches, my eyes burn, my muscles are weak, my stomach hurts. I can’t help but wonder if hardcore sleep deprivation is used against spies and terrorists to break their spirit. Let me just say, I would tell someone anything they wanted to know if that meant I could start sleeping through the night again. Update: just this morning there was a news story about how the CIA used sleep deprivation against suspected terrorists. I’m not condoning torture in any way, even though I am being tortured, and misery loves company.
This would work… but probably not a sustainable solution.
4. I hate nighttime. The more sleep deprived I get, the more I dread going to bed. It’s one thing to bump along during the day, feeling crappy, but having things to distract you from the crappiness, and another to be forced out of bed for hours of the night trying, in vain, to convince another human to do something they have no interest in doing. It is frustrating on a level I still can’t wrap my head around, and more depressing than watching one of those science programs that always shows the baby deer being hunted by a wolf. Stop with that. We get it. Wolves eat baby deer.
Stupidly, very stupidly, I just googled “wolves hunting deer.” Bambi with a butterfly on his butt is better.
5. Lastly, this has served as a reminder that this is hard. This is hard, man. Not always, but sometimes, and sometimes for long chunks of time. It is hard to be patient and kind when you feel like a rabid raccoon. It is hard to be empathetic and understanding when all you can think about is the burning behind your eyes, and the heaviness in your limbs. Forget being the perfect mom. When you are bone tired, it’s all you can do to remember to put on two shoes that maybe match. So the next time some little turd kid rips a toy out of my little dumpling’s hand, and their mom just stares blankly ahead, I will try to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she’s just tired. I get that.
Image credits: Cover, Shampoo, One Direction, Joker, List, Drunk, Bambi
We’ve all been there. You’re at the park, quietly watching your little while they play calmly in the sandbox with a broken shovel and a pine cone. From the corner of your eye, you see her approach, her seasonally appropriate attire clean and cute, her hair in a suspiciously full, yet contained top knot. In a moment of panic, you look down at your own outfit, and discover a dried out macaroni noodle stuck to your sweater in the exact location of your nipple. You manage to remove it just before she gets there, and breathe a temporary sigh of relief, but dread washes over you as you see the bright yellow semi-circle the noodle has left behind, creating a rather convincing “friendly cyclops” effect on your right boob.
It’s like this, but maybe just a few less noodles.
She delicately arranges herself on the edge of the sandbox, reusable coffee cup in one manicured hand, eco-friendly, gender neutral, Montessori toy in the other. And then, as if coming straight from a Hannah Andersson magazine shoot, in toddles the perfect toddler. This toddler is wearing matching everything, and unlike your child, they don’t have walrus-like tusks of snot hanging off their face. They enter the sandbox, and in the distance you hear the faint, but distinct, sound of bells signaling the start of round one.
These guys rolling up to the sand box is (marginally) more terrifying than finding a clown in a dark alley.
For a few seconds, nothing happens, and you think “Maybe this is the nanny? Oh please be the nanny…” But this thought is interrupted by the seemingly innocent complement/question one-two punch, “She is so cute! How old is she?” And it begins. For those of you who don’t yet have kids, this seems so harmless. “She’s just being nice!” you may say. But really, like a raptor testing the fence, she’s just found her way in. “She’s 15 months,” you reply. And then because you don’t want to come off like the ogre you feel like, you reply with “I love your daughter’s shoes. How old is she?” Here’s where it gets serious. Secretly you are hoping and praying her kid is at least 6 months older. Look at the way she scoops the sand, and dumps it in to the bucket with such accuracy! And did she just speak in full sentences? She has to be at least 22 months. “My little angel is 14 months!” she says, confirming your worst fears.
From here it gets ugly quick. You discover that her little princess started sleeping through the night at 2 months, and continues to do so, in her own bed. She sat up at 3 months. She crawled at 5 months. She walked at 8 months. She is basically potty trained. She speaks three languages, not including sign language, which she can also do comfortably. It is after finding out she saved the preschool hamster by giving it the Heimlich that you look over at your own offspring, and discover they are currently chewing on a sand-covered apple core they’ve just unearthed.
Sand. In your teeth. It hurts me to even type that.
Before you get too down on yourself, let’s pump the brakes on this train wreck and put things in perspective. It’s horribly cliché to say “every baby is different,” but it’s the most simple way to put something that is, quite simply, the truth.
I find myself getting caught up in this nonsense still, when some over-achieving wonder-tot spits some crazy toddler knowledge at Baby 1.0 and me. Just this weekend, we shared the sandbox with an 18 month old who could speak in full sentences (we actually witnessed it), and according to his mom, could read. Baby 1.0 doesn’t even really have a word yet, and while she knows what the word “nose” is, she can actually only locate it on my face maybe 60% of the time (for the record, my nose is in the standard location, midway between both ears, on the front of my face). But instead of (me) pooping in the sandbox and going home and ordering the entire Baby Einstein series off Amazon in a panic, which I considered, my husband and I just shrugged and told ourselves, “Every baby is different. She will get there.”
These comparisons are often not malicious, as I too, find myself wondering how Baby 1.0 stacks up against the average toddler. But sometimes they sure can feel that way. My guess is I’m not alone in feeling judged, or in all honesty, judging every once in a while (every day). Our babies are like our own little 4H projects, and just like when the judge comes to your stall and points out your cow has a googly eye, you feel like you need to compensate and tell him all about how, googly eye and all, your magnificent cow is able to sweep the barn if you attach the special sweeping mitts you made to her feet. Maybe this hasn’t happened to anybody else, but you get the point. Every baby has their downfalls, but I’ll be damned if there aren’t 10 things that make up for that downfall.
This cow does not have a googly eye. It does, however, have what appears to be a case of cow narcolepsy.
I think for my own sanity, I need to replace the question “is my baby is better?” with the acknowledgement that “every baby is different” more readily. I should make it my mantra, and carry it with me, probably for the rest of my life. I can only imagine these comparisons continue, in some degree, forever.
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Image credits:
I would be hard pressed to think of something we Americans like more than our social media. We spend hours a day tweeting, and liking, and whatever you do on tumbler-ing. Recently, huge news stories have broken on websites like Twitter, where people go to report on events from pee wee football games to earthquakes, in real time. Since this is clearly the future of everything, I’ve decided to start honing my skills early and give it a try. So with that said, I will now begin live-streaming the next 7 minutes of my average morning.
Okay, so here we are. It’s 8:20 am on a Saturday. Baby 1.0 has been awake for approximately 1 hour. Like a good toddler, she has already turned down her breakfast, and eaten half of ours. I’m struggling to protect both my computer, and my hot cup of coffee from her very curious reaches.
8:21- Baby 1.0 walks into the kitchen singing. She throws open the bottom drawer containing dish rags and assorted baby items, with authority. She tears them out, one by one, tossing them over her head in dramatic fashion while yelling something that sounds like “Biiiiierbetertert,” with more pitch changes than Mariah Carey’s Emotions album.
8:22- Storms out of kitchen suddenly, demanding to be held. Cat uses this opportunity to climb into now empty drawer. Baby 1.0 walks up to Dad requesting to be picked up – “puh, puh, puh” she chants, with arms extended up. Much to my astonishment, Dad unexpectedly begins beat boxing and bobbing around, similar to one of those air-filled wavy tube men at tire stores. This seems to distract Baby 1.0 from her request to be held, and we both stare at him curiously.
8:23- Dad and Baby 1.0 sit on the ground and begin a conversation with Siri. “Do you know my name?” he asks. “Jason, or at least that’s what you told me” Siri replies. “I love you,” he says. “All you need is love. And your iPhone,” she says, like a stone cold fox. Dad begins singing “All You Need Is Love” by the Beatles. Gets as far in as singing “All you need is…” and trails off.
8:24- Silence. Silence? Baby 1.0 comes around the corner and begins a vicious attack on my lappy. Grunting, arms flailing, slapping, yelling “bee bee bee!”- it’s her main goal in life to find buttons to push, and one of her favorite targets are laptops. I’m deflecting pokes left and right, while trying to prevent my lappy from being thrown on the floor, or having the content erased.
8:25- Attack is called off when Baby 1.0 is suddenly distracted by the sight of her teddy bear, aptly named “Teddy,” who has escaped her crib, and is lying on the floor near her bedroom door. Ambles off to retrieve Teddy. Returns with Teddy moments later making kissing noises. Requests I give Teddy kisses. I reach over for Teddy, and give him a big kiss, and a little snuggle. Capitalizes on my soft heart, and uses opportunity to TURN OFF MY COMPUTER MID-SENTENCE LIKE A NINJA, BY PUSHING ONE BUTTON.
8:26- Has my attention while computer reboots. Baby 1.0 burps. Pinches my arm. Wants to nurse. Wanders of kissing Teddy and saying “Baaaaabbbby.” Looks out the window and mutters “Oooooh boy.” Or at least that’s what it sounds like.
8:27- Sees cat. Chases cat yelling “Kitty MEOOOOOW!” which cat loves. And by loves I mean runs away from at an impressive clip considering her waist to leg ratio. Cat squeezes through baby gate with significant effort. Baby 1.0 watches her disappear under bed skirt. Disappointment evident.
8:28- Wanders back into living room to attack lamp. Ignores multiple requests from Dad to stop. In desperation, Dad picks up box and puts it on his head claiming to be the T.V. “Hey! I’m the T.V.!” he says in a goofy clown voice. Baby 1.0 turns away from the lamp, and stompruns over to him (I’m guessing our downstairs neighbor isn’t too fond of us), rips the box off his head, becomes off-balance and steps on book that makes animal sounds. Discovers that by stepping on the book, animal sounds will be made. Begins stepping on the book repeatedly. “Moo! Moo! Moo! Moo! Neigh! Oink! Oink!” – it sounds like a farm in a tornado. Then she stops, looks up at me with big blue eyes and starts fake coughing, my hint that she is feeling sleepy, and has about a 45 second window to bring her down into the nap zone.
By my calculations, in seven minutes, she has changed activities no less than 64 times (okay, I didn’t actually count, but I don’t have time to). Her attention span for any one activity, seems to last about as long as one beat of her tiny little heart. This pace is the one thing that remains constant all day, every day. Sure, there are times she will sit with you and read a book or two. But pretty much every waking moment is equal parts carnival ride and train wreck. It’s an exhausting pace that leaves us both spinning by the end of the day. But in the most mushy gushy way, I wouldn’t change any of it for a second.
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Image credits:
Cover photo: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fiPZNSWN8Fg/UDEuXQisZII/AAAAAAAAC48/ZXYm1NOhwLM/s1600/7+minutes.jpg
Mariah Carey: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3e/Emotions_Mariah_Carey.png
Air man: http://innovativecommunications.tv/files/2012/10/blowout_sale_skypuppet_yellow_single_1003lar.jpg
iPhone: https://c1.staticflickr.com/7/6178/6261865591_ce380761da_z.jpg
Baby 1.0 photos are ours!!
Kids books. It blows my mind what people will publish, and it’s even more confusing what becomes popular. In this weekly segment, we will randomly review a book Baby 1.0 picks off her bookshelf.
This week Baby 1.0 picked yet another one of her go-to favorite reads: Tiny Tot’s Puppies and Kittens. You can say to her “Baby 1.0, go get Tiny Tot’s Puppies and Kittens” and she will drop whatever she is doing and find it. Part of me thinks this is a clear indication that she is a genius, but it could also be she just likes it that much.
This book doesn’t even have an author, presumably because all told it only has 44 words in it. I say more than 44 words to myself in the shower on days that I shower. The book does, however, have an illustrator named Kathy Wilburn, who absolutely nails the pictures, in a 70’s elementary school kind of way.
This book is another oldie but goody, first published in 1987. It’s a Golden book, and is part of a series that includes some other riveting reads such as Tiny Tot’s Busy Day and Tiny Tot’s Toys. I haven’t read the others, but feel strongly that this is the best this series has to offer.
The book opens with the observation that “puppies are soft and cuddly.” It follows that up with “so are kittens.” Being someone who has worked with puppies and kittens for nearly a decade, I feel it’s my civic duty to inform you this is not always true. I’ll give you soft, but cuddly? I have some scars on my arms that would beg to differ. But whatever, let’s just chalk that one up to more lies we tell our kids. It’s in good company with Santa, the Tooth Fairy and why Gary the goldfish had to be released into the wild via your toilet.
The book goes on to show some mischievous kittens and puppies wrecking shop in someone’s house. Again, we have young animals playing with a ball of yarn, just like in Goodnight Moon. No yarn, people! I’ve seen those strings pulled from the intestines of your precious pets. It’s not a pretty sight!
After causing an indoor ruckus, the puppy and kitten go outside to terrorize the insect world. The kitten sets its sights on a delicate butterfly while the puppy goes after a beetle. Probably a stink beetle. The kitten is prancing around with a blue ribbon around its neck, which makes me wonder, did our good friend Kathy the illustrator ever have a cat? You put anything around a kitten’s neck and they will turn into a tornado until they get it off.
The book finishes up with an idyllic scene where four kittens are playing with one puppy. This is Baby 1.0’s favorite page because this is where I get to say “Yip! Yip! Mew! Mew!” which she thinks is the best thing in the whole world, which in turn makes me think this book is the best book in the whole world.
So there you have it. I actually love this book. It’s simple as can be, with dorkus drawings but I guess that what makes it so endearing. I give it a 3.72/5.
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It's just the beginning... by Ali Solomon
Hold Me, Don't Hold ME 
