A Rubber Ducky Tragedy
I have to admit I'm still failing at sleep training with the younger one, possibly because I had such confidence in to my ability to do so after all - I've done it all before. The universe loves to slap the hubris from me. I've been trying to get him to sleep through the night and not nurse continually by not being in the room so there I was, relegated to the couch, with my toddler asleep in his room
on a queen side bed and my baby in our bedroom in our queen side bed. I related the absurdity of our
spatial hierarchy to my husband who was back on the east coast and we decided to redouble efforts at sleep training, which I fairly remember is something we've said before.... it's been an arduous road. Oh, to sleep the night through!
Sharing your bedroom with a baby, invariably, for us, involves sharing our bed. In order to keep him in his crib, we've had to devise intricate plans how to crawl into bed without M waking up in his crib, which have all proved fallible. We had numerous considerations for a perfect prowl - we timed it with traffic, we walked a sinuous path to avoid creaky floorboards, we opened the door in deliberately in a slow manner, we - well, admittedly my husband - had figured out by trial and error the best method of uncovering the sheets - everything was planned out to a t- and just when we smelt the aroma of victory, Ernie infiltrated our mission and compromised it by deciding to singing in damning decibels about his rubber duckies. We froze in frigid fear and locked stares of dismay. How could we be so sloppy as to have left a toy in our bed? And why was a singing toy not turned off? Before we could assess the cause of our catastrophe, we heard a murmur and held our breath for a Plinian eruption from our awakened progeny. Instead we merely heard a murmur as M simply shifted his position. After a few seconds, as an incipient smile sliced the shadows on my husband's face, I laughed. I should confess that I possess a thunderous laugh (and that is somewhat euphemistically termed)
and that our victory was short-lived, to say the least. Soon our bed housed three. One babe sprawling as he mimicked a starfish (it is quite astounding how much space a baby can colonize) and two adults frightened into foetal positions, two defeated lumps limping their way to a fractured sleep on the edges of the bed.
The other night, we went out to see some live music, which we haven't done in a while. We barely made it out the door in time, but we did it. I had no time to get ready and albeit I was never really one for glamming it up (nor admittedly, if this had ever been my taste, would I have known what to do in this regard - I only own one eyeshadow, one eyeliner and one mascara and as for hair styling accessories - ha! ) but I did clean up my aspect by for instance, putting on clean clothes and brushing my hair. Those days of civility are gone. My husband and I invariably leave the home with clothes stained by our sons' dinner and sometimes, I've discovered holdouts in my hair. My boys also like to play with my clothes and invariably have torn buttons and unwound thread so that now whenever I have a chance to shop, I look for armour, picking clothes not based on style but on durability - well, this looks like a sack, but I bet vomit really cleans up well.
Thus, not having had time to change my clothes nor brush my hair, I left the house with an aspect that looked keenly designed to frighten even the most unfrazzled onlookers. There were suspicious stains on my jeans and as for my cephalic circumstance, my visage was populated by the labyrinth of lines that arrive with the sleep deprivation and worry of motherhood coupled with a capillary catastrophe that was whipped into a target for avian house hunters with the coup de grâce of my aspect, being the red scratches across my neck and chest as a consequence of M's rather unchivalrous nursing habits (which my husband, in what must have indubitably been a frisson of romance described as appearing as if I had an infectious disease). I slumped a tad when as I saw my impression in a mirror that seemed ashamed of its incorrigible honesty and then I regained my resolve and figured, since it's all about perception, that we would get more space on the dance floor. And we had a ball.
on a queen side bed and my baby in our bedroom in our queen side bed. I related the absurdity of our
spatial hierarchy to my husband who was back on the east coast and we decided to redouble efforts at sleep training, which I fairly remember is something we've said before.... it's been an arduous road. Oh, to sleep the night through!
Sharing your bedroom with a baby, invariably, for us, involves sharing our bed. In order to keep him in his crib, we've had to devise intricate plans how to crawl into bed without M waking up in his crib, which have all proved fallible. We had numerous considerations for a perfect prowl - we timed it with traffic, we walked a sinuous path to avoid creaky floorboards, we opened the door in deliberately in a slow manner, we - well, admittedly my husband - had figured out by trial and error the best method of uncovering the sheets - everything was planned out to a t- and just when we smelt the aroma of victory, Ernie infiltrated our mission and compromised it by deciding to singing in damning decibels about his rubber duckies. We froze in frigid fear and locked stares of dismay. How could we be so sloppy as to have left a toy in our bed? And why was a singing toy not turned off? Before we could assess the cause of our catastrophe, we heard a murmur and held our breath for a Plinian eruption from our awakened progeny. Instead we merely heard a murmur as M simply shifted his position. After a few seconds, as an incipient smile sliced the shadows on my husband's face, I laughed. I should confess that I possess a thunderous laugh (and that is somewhat euphemistically termed)
and that our victory was short-lived, to say the least. Soon our bed housed three. One babe sprawling as he mimicked a starfish (it is quite astounding how much space a baby can colonize) and two adults frightened into foetal positions, two defeated lumps limping their way to a fractured sleep on the edges of the bed.
The other night, we went out to see some live music, which we haven't done in a while. We barely made it out the door in time, but we did it. I had no time to get ready and albeit I was never really one for glamming it up (nor admittedly, if this had ever been my taste, would I have known what to do in this regard - I only own one eyeshadow, one eyeliner and one mascara and as for hair styling accessories - ha! ) but I did clean up my aspect by for instance, putting on clean clothes and brushing my hair. Those days of civility are gone. My husband and I invariably leave the home with clothes stained by our sons' dinner and sometimes, I've discovered holdouts in my hair. My boys also like to play with my clothes and invariably have torn buttons and unwound thread so that now whenever I have a chance to shop, I look for armour, picking clothes not based on style but on durability - well, this looks like a sack, but I bet vomit really cleans up well.
Thus, not having had time to change my clothes nor brush my hair, I left the house with an aspect that looked keenly designed to frighten even the most unfrazzled onlookers. There were suspicious stains on my jeans and as for my cephalic circumstance, my visage was populated by the labyrinth of lines that arrive with the sleep deprivation and worry of motherhood coupled with a capillary catastrophe that was whipped into a target for avian house hunters with the coup de grâce of my aspect, being the red scratches across my neck and chest as a consequence of M's rather unchivalrous nursing habits (which my husband, in what must have indubitably been a frisson of romance described as appearing as if I had an infectious disease). I slumped a tad when as I saw my impression in a mirror that seemed ashamed of its incorrigible honesty and then I regained my resolve and figured, since it's all about perception, that we would get more space on the dance floor. And we had a ball.
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