Bedtime

It started out as a bath, book, bottle-of-milk-before-bouncing-him-to-sleep routine.  That was when he was so small that his entire little body still fit on my lap.

The bouncing turned into swaying.

The swaying turned into holding him for one song on his lullaby cd: "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," then kissing him goodnight and putting him in the crib.

The swaddle blanket was exchanged for a sleep sack.

He fell asleep every night with Toby clutched in one hand, his pacifier still moving rhythmically in his mouth.

The books changed from Fish Kisses to Goodnight, Moon.

The bottle of milk was dropped after too many soggy mornings.

The lullaby cd was tucked in a drawer in favor of a live version of the first song.

The bath was regularly followed by a naked baby dance before the pajamas could be wrestled on.

The goodnight kiss was given along with a request for a hug for Mama.  This request was often denied, but the kiss was never refused.  He hugged plenty during the day, but at night perhaps he needed his space.

The crib became a toddler bed.

One song became two as we added "I Love You Today" to our repertoire.

The sleep sack was folded away and Gramma's blanket has to be tucked-tucked in snug as a bug in a rug around the limbs that were just hanging off my lap while we read a Thomas the Train book.

Seven o'clock is still bedtime.

An hour later, I hear a little voice talking to Toby.

I walk in and ask what he needs.  A change?  Some water?  A lost pacifier retrieved?

"You need some songs."

So once more, I sing to him that I love him today and I'll love him tomorrow, and how I wonder about that little star.

And then I kiss his forehead a second time and say, "I love you.  Have a good rest.  Have sweet dreams, and I'll see you in the morning.  Good night, Toby.  Good night, Sebastian."

Pause.

"Good night, Mama."

And for the first time, his arms reach out to give me a bedtime hug.  Unrequested.

Someday I'm going to miss this.

little hippos

Because comparison pictures are such fun...

Sebastian in the bath - March 2009

Theo in the bath - March 2011

They're starting to look a lot more distinctive to me, especially since Theo isn't nearly as chubby as our sumo baby was, but there are still plenty of moments of déja vu.

Sebastian in the hippo towel - March 2009

Theo in the hippo towel - March 2011

And now, this photo pretty much captures the two personalities I'm dealing with right now:

Mr. Happy and Mr. Silly

Count to Ten

We have a counting obsession going on at our house, but rather than freaking out at hearing that "Chicka Chicka 1-2-3" song for the thousandth time, I've been grateful for a simple method of counting to ten.

It's not to get the toddler to do what I've asked him to do.  For that, I count back from 5.  If I get to 1 before he's made a choice or moved into action (depending on the request), I decide for him or move his body where it needs to go.  This works wonders.

It's also not the count to ten strategy I've used for years to calm myself down when I'm angry so that my head doesn't explode, although my husband might like me to reinstitute that particular technique.  Especially when I haven't slept more than 4 hours the night before.  Ahem.

No, the counting to ten I've been doing lately is to keep myself from interfering in my sons' attempts to solve their own problems.

If the little ball that Theo was happily chomping on rolls out of his reach, I lean down to grab it and put it back in his lap.  I can do this while folding clothes and talking to Sebastian at the same time, it is that unconscious.

It's giving Sebastian a boost up into the car seat so we can just get going already because we're half an hour late and of course today would be the day everyone took long naps since it's the only day in the whole week we actually had plans.  ARGH.

But they don't really need my help in those situations, no matter how much they or I might think they do.  They need me to sit back and wait.
And count to ten.  Slowly.  Deliberately.  Silently.
Because often by the time I get to eight, they've already solved the problem themselves.

Theo has grabbed another toy and is happily chomping that instead.  Or he's rolled onto his belly and stretched out that little hand and rolled the ball back into his mouth.

Sebastian has climbed up into the car seat and is wearing that "I did it myself!!" smile when he turns around to look at me.

"Solve the Problem" was my classroom motto for two years before I had kids, and I thought I was good at getting kids to come up with their own solutions before I intervened.  But it turns out that I had to relearn that when it came to my own children.

I know it's paying off when I watch Sebastian struggle to turn on the light in Theo's room.  I don't offer to help or turn on the light for him or even prompt him at all with my own solution.  In my head, I count to ten.  As I hit five, I see him walk out of the room and return a moment later with his kitchen stool.  He stands on it and turns on the light.

Then he looks at me and says, "Good job solving the problem!"

Those little numbers.  Sometimes they add up to a lot of independence.  For all of us.

My own Mr. Brave

I don't know if you've ever read those Mr. Men and Little Miss books, but I loved them when I was little, and then I re-loved them when I started teaching with my friend R who used them as a creative writing inspiration for her fourth graders (a project I happily stole to use with my own classes).  And now I am loving them again as Sebastian discovers them for the first time.

One of his favorites is Mr. Brave, who it turns out is brave in all kinds of ways.  Alas, he is also a little bit afraid of heights and at one point in the book points out that the tightrope he is on is fraying.  "Oh calamity!  Oh help!" he shouts.  (See why I love them?)  His companion, Little Miss Somersault, replies, "Be brave, Mr. Brave."


And a mantra was born.

Sebastian - like all small children, I expect - has his own fears and worries.  They are toddler-sized to me, but to him they are enormous.  They began with getting his hair cut, then fuzzies in the bathtub, and now also include having his face washed or having Mama leave for any reason.  He used to cry, scream, plead (those  teary "puh-LEASE"s would break anyone's heart).  But now, as soon as he starts to whine or scrunch up his face to howl, I tell him to "be brave, Mr. Brave."

Magic.

He steels himself for whatever is coming and with maybe only a whimper or two...

he survives it.

Bravely.

Getting it off my chest

Every evening my husband asks me how my day was.  He probably holds his breath a little while he does it, because the odds are pretty high that I will sigh dramatically and then launch into a litany of large and small irritations of my day.  I blame this mostly on the fact that the end of the day is always a scramble of trying to get dinner ready, baths done, and bedtime routines completed with one boy and then the other.  He usually arrives at the tail end of this (or after it's over), so all the happy little moments of the day go unmentioned until much later.

Walking the boys up to get doughnuts on this happy Fat Tuesday afternoon, I decided that what I ought to give up for Lent is complaining.

And so, here are the things I will not be talking about for the next 40 days...

I will not mention anything about how Theo slept for 11.5 hours one night and then woke up four times the next.  And then figured out how to roll onto his belly to fall asleep, but wasn't sure he liked it so woke up every hour for two straight nights in order to complain about it.  It obviously follows that I also won't mention how freaking tired I am.  Instead I will focus on how fabulous it is that this phase has passed and that I am no longer nursing him at night.  (fist pump!)

Accidents of the toilet variety shall also go unnoted.  Suffice it to say that we have roughly one per day, which is not coincidentally the same number of bowel movements that the toddler has in that same time frame.  Enough said.  I'll just be happy that the traveling toddler toilet now stays put!

There will be no complaining about missed naps, cranky toddlers, meals uneaten, odd requests or the tantrums that ensue when they are not met.  I shall say nothing of having my hair yanked, pulled out, or sucked on by the infant.  I'll revel in the fact that "everybody likes M&Ms" and that they do eventually mumble sleepy "love you"s before going to bed.

I will no longer sigh (or cry) about living so far from most of my family and friends nor silently curse Microsoft for making my husband not want to move.  Ok, I may still curse it, but as long as it's silent, does that really count?  Surely not.

The house (a.k.a. the money pit) with its lack of playroom or guest room, or the backyard that gets approximately 20 minutes of sunshine each day, or the garage jam-packed with teaching supplies I'm not using and baby clothes I can't seem to part with will fall off my list of daily woes.  I'll just be grateful to have a roof over our heads and that our refinancing has allowed us to get housecleaning again.  I shall do a little happy dance every month when my house is freshly vacuumed and scrubbed, even if it only lasts all of an hour.

Uncertainty about my career and the rejection letter I received last week will stop being a primary focus of my 3 a.m. can't-get-back-to-sleep musings.  I'll be thinking instead about my plans to get endorsed to teach gifted and talented classes, and spend the next several months applying for positions around town for the fall.

I shall say nothing of my frustration at often finding myself still in pajamas at 4 p.m. most days, though this is fair warning to anyone thinking of dropping in on us before noon.  The deodorant doesn't go on until the real clothes do.  Sorry about that.  It's unfortunate for everyone.

You won't miss hearing about back-to-back colds, being buried in tissues and covered in snot.
You'll enjoy pictures of spring walks and babies in swings instead, I'm sure.  And so will I.  Here's one to get us started:

Click on this to see it bigger.  It's worth it!

With this resolution in mind, I find I'm looking forward to Lent.

I'll miss the doughnuts, though.  They were delicious.  Oh wait, I'm not giving those up.  Good thing I bought an extra one for tomorrow...

I am not the housekeeper

Once upon a time, I had a full-time teaching job.  It was neither long ago nor far away, though it sometimes feels as though it was from a different life.  Because it was.  It was from the years B.C.  You know, Before Children.

In the B.C. years, I also had a house, a yard, and two cats.  My husband and I took care of these things in the mornings, nights, and on weekends.  We had a chore list that specified who did what.  I hate cleaning the bathroom.  He didn't cook.  It all worked out, more or less.  A little less than more sometimes, as we continually reevaluated whether our division of labor was fair.

Then we had our first child.  I still worked full-time: teaching half the time and doing day care for two babies in the other half.  We still split the chores, doing them in our "free time," which was becoming more and more limited.  Still, aside from night nursing, things were more or less shared.

And then I stopped teaching and went on full-time childcare leave.  My impression was that it was going to be my job to care for the child(ren) during the workday.  I also thought a bonus of working at home was that I was going to occasionally get to do my share of the chores during the day and have a bit more time to sleep write in the evenings.

Flash forward a year and a half.  My husband plays with the boys in the morning as I rush around trying to do as many chores as possible before he leaves, since changing the load of laundry without a baby on your hip is approximately five zillion times faster.  As I clear the breakfast table of everyone's dishes, I mutter angrily in his general direction that they don't pay me enough to be the housekeeper around here.

This turns out to be spectacularly inaccurate, though, because of course a housekeeper gets paid far more than I do, since pretty much any sum is more than the big fat nothing I currently make.

The problem is that it turns out that "stay-at-home mom" too easily turns into "homemaker," which apparently involves cleaning up after everyone in the house, even the person who used to clean up after himself and split the chores with me.  Sadly I may have partly myself to blame.  Somehow, despite the fact that caring for children is a full-time job, I seem to feel like I have to compensate for the fact that I no longer bring in a monetary income, and the way to do that is by taking on more than my share of all of the non-childcare work that still has to happen around here.  I also just get into a groove of cleaning up after others, since two small children require an extraordinary amount of constant maintenance.

It's hard, but I have to keep reminding myself --and occasionally others -- that I am not the housekeeper.   I'm the mom.  Dishes do not whisk themselves to the sink and jump into the dishwasher.  Laundry does not wash, dry, fold, or put itself away.  I'll take care of the kids from 9-7, Monday-Friday and whatever bowls they use or shirts they spill carrots on.

As for the rest of the house, yard, and the cats... I'll do my half, no problem...

Until I can get the kids to do it for me, of course.