It's 4:00 am and T-minus one day before the move. I can't sleep. I woke up about 3 am, in anticipation of Sethie crying. For the first five months of his life, he slept in his car seat due to acid reflux. He got so comfy in there he was sleeping from 7 pm to 7 am straight. Oh how I bragged about it. About the time he started rolling over, we knew we needed to transition him to his crib. He's never slept all the way through the night since.
I always said I would be one of those people who wouldn't tolerate their kid waking up in the night. I never had to try that theory on Thomas--he was (and remains) a deep sleeper, so deep in fact that as I was stumbling over to pick up Sethie a few nights ago (we are all in the same room right now because our boxes are stacked up in Thomas's room--even more fun!), I actually stepped on the poor child and it didn't even solicit so much as an "umph!" from him. So he slept through the night pretty much at three months and has never looked back. I've always been inclined toward the heartless, let-them-cry-it-out method, but that was before I had a share a room with a sobbing baby in the middle of the night. Not to mention, Sethie has perfected the art of playing chicken. Challenge to him to a "stop your yapping" contest of wills and I'll bang my head through the actual wall before he stops crying on his own and goes back to sleep.
Thomas inherited his sleeping prowess from Nate. I tell the story of Thomas as a newborn waking up every hour for the first few days of his life and how it had me rattled, but Nate slept peaceably through it all, even the time where I was hitting him in the arm to get him up saying, "I hate you!" over and over again (Note to readers: I don't actually hate my husband. This is what only an hour of sleep at a time turns me into). Oy. The things we do when we're tired. Well, the things I do. Sleep has always been one of the sweetest pleasures for me--and I hate having it interrupted. Nothing better than to stay in bed until the morning is half over, with a breeze coming in the window, wrapped up in fuzzy covers. I suppose some day the kids will be out of the house and I can do that again, but by then I'll be having dinner at 4:30 pm and waking up promptly at 6 am to do whatever it is old people do at that hour. Knit? Tai chi? Watch Cosby show reruns?
I am feeling a little panic in my heart--just a twinge, a mite, a single jalapeño of panic. Is it because we're moving? Maybe it's because all the stress of the last year is being packed into these last sleepless moments, where I feel that something something must go wrong or it wouldn't fit the pattern. Tomorrow we run into Riverdale to pick up the truck and we plan to sneak it into a parking space in front of our building while all the cars are out for alternate side street sweeping. How diabolical! I have some last minute errands to take care of, too--returning Michelle's tupperware which I've had since Sethie was born, installing Heather's memory which I promised I'd do before I left, taking the leftover veggies in my fridge to Iris (she makes a good home for a butternut squash)...these are my goodbyes, I suppose. We didn't have a going away party. We just told everyone this week "It's Saturday" and felt abashed at the dropped jaws. I'm no good at this, really. I just can't keep all the details straight in my head and other people are the first to suffer my ADD. I've got a santa's bag full of emails to respond to, too, and I keep saying I'll take care of it when I get to the new place, but maybe I should just send out a general broadcast of my ineptness so everyone will know "it's not you, it's me". Really.
4:30 am now. I should go back to bed. The bedroom is cheerily silent--no fidgeting babies, no four-year-old's nightmares. Poor Thomas--after he saw a bug in the backyard of our new house, he's been obsessed with them. "Ah bugs, mommy, bugs on my face!" he yells in the middle of the night. He has to have seen bugs before, here in the city, right? We waged righteous battle against a house centipede not too long ago and it didn't give him nightmares. Kids' fears seem to change in an instant. There's a moment, I think, when we realize that there are actual things in the dark--we just can't see them. I still get weirded out by strange shapes in the hallway, things I may have left out and forgotten were there. How much worse for a little boy to whom the world is large and out of his control. How nice it must be to have a mommy you can cry out to, who scoops you up and soothes you.
I still touch Nate in the middle of the night--just put my hand on his chest, feel that compression of breath, bury my nose in his ear. We always need someone bigger than us, to handle the things we can't seem to handle. I suppose that's the only way we can learn to sleep through the night, when we can fully trust that someone is there, every moment.
Okay, I get you, Sethie. I get you.
I always said I would be one of those people who wouldn't tolerate their kid waking up in the night. I never had to try that theory on Thomas--he was (and remains) a deep sleeper, so deep in fact that as I was stumbling over to pick up Sethie a few nights ago (we are all in the same room right now because our boxes are stacked up in Thomas's room--even more fun!), I actually stepped on the poor child and it didn't even solicit so much as an "umph!" from him. So he slept through the night pretty much at three months and has never looked back. I've always been inclined toward the heartless, let-them-cry-it-out method, but that was before I had a share a room with a sobbing baby in the middle of the night. Not to mention, Sethie has perfected the art of playing chicken. Challenge to him to a "stop your yapping" contest of wills and I'll bang my head through the actual wall before he stops crying on his own and goes back to sleep.
Thomas inherited his sleeping prowess from Nate. I tell the story of Thomas as a newborn waking up every hour for the first few days of his life and how it had me rattled, but Nate slept peaceably through it all, even the time where I was hitting him in the arm to get him up saying, "I hate you!" over and over again (Note to readers: I don't actually hate my husband. This is what only an hour of sleep at a time turns me into). Oy. The things we do when we're tired. Well, the things I do. Sleep has always been one of the sweetest pleasures for me--and I hate having it interrupted. Nothing better than to stay in bed until the morning is half over, with a breeze coming in the window, wrapped up in fuzzy covers. I suppose some day the kids will be out of the house and I can do that again, but by then I'll be having dinner at 4:30 pm and waking up promptly at 6 am to do whatever it is old people do at that hour. Knit? Tai chi? Watch Cosby show reruns?
I am feeling a little panic in my heart--just a twinge, a mite, a single jalapeño of panic. Is it because we're moving? Maybe it's because all the stress of the last year is being packed into these last sleepless moments, where I feel that something something must go wrong or it wouldn't fit the pattern. Tomorrow we run into Riverdale to pick up the truck and we plan to sneak it into a parking space in front of our building while all the cars are out for alternate side street sweeping. How diabolical! I have some last minute errands to take care of, too--returning Michelle's tupperware which I've had since Sethie was born, installing Heather's memory which I promised I'd do before I left, taking the leftover veggies in my fridge to Iris (she makes a good home for a butternut squash)...these are my goodbyes, I suppose. We didn't have a going away party. We just told everyone this week "It's Saturday" and felt abashed at the dropped jaws. I'm no good at this, really. I just can't keep all the details straight in my head and other people are the first to suffer my ADD. I've got a santa's bag full of emails to respond to, too, and I keep saying I'll take care of it when I get to the new place, but maybe I should just send out a general broadcast of my ineptness so everyone will know "it's not you, it's me". Really.
4:30 am now. I should go back to bed. The bedroom is cheerily silent--no fidgeting babies, no four-year-old's nightmares. Poor Thomas--after he saw a bug in the backyard of our new house, he's been obsessed with them. "Ah bugs, mommy, bugs on my face!" he yells in the middle of the night. He has to have seen bugs before, here in the city, right? We waged righteous battle against a house centipede not too long ago and it didn't give him nightmares. Kids' fears seem to change in an instant. There's a moment, I think, when we realize that there are actual things in the dark--we just can't see them. I still get weirded out by strange shapes in the hallway, things I may have left out and forgotten were there. How much worse for a little boy to whom the world is large and out of his control. How nice it must be to have a mommy you can cry out to, who scoops you up and soothes you.
I still touch Nate in the middle of the night--just put my hand on his chest, feel that compression of breath, bury my nose in his ear. We always need someone bigger than us, to handle the things we can't seem to handle. I suppose that's the only way we can learn to sleep through the night, when we can fully trust that someone is there, every moment.
Okay, I get you, Sethie. I get you.
Sethie takes a snooze on my coat, under the bleachers at Thomas's preschool.
1 comment:
ahhh... this is lovely writing and i'm very excited to have you to read. glad you're blogging! some consolation for your absence. :( and thanks for putting you're comments back in.
xoxo
heather
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