Stuck Under a Baby

Tag: sleep

  • But, Oh, Oh, Those Summer Nights

    I hate the winter.  Sure, I love the holiday season and the twinkling of Christmas lights (which, by the way, I feel should be required to stay up until at least Presidents’ Day), but the whole getting dark at 4 o’clock thing really sucks.  The day seems to be over so quickly, I want to be in my pajamas before I’ve even had dinner, and I feel as if I should be asleep by 6 pm.  I hate the short winter days and long winter nights.  Well, I did.  Then I had children.

    Oh, how I used to long for these summer nights.  The sun setting after 9 pm, having dinner and drinks outside on a patio, going for walks, and basking in the glow of firefly lights.  But now that I have kids, I am finding it harder to enjoy these summer nights.  Our days are great – we’re playing, we’re learning, we’re enjoying our time together.  Our nights, however, are much more challenging.  At 7 pm, bathed and fed, my children want nothing more than to go back outside to play and get dirty in the garden or go for yet another bike ride.  With the sun still shining so bright, it is hard to convince them that it is actually nearing bedtime.

    Keeping the lights in the house low does nothing.  Blackout curtains do nothing (the light still seems to find its way in).  Using “The Force” to try and make the sun go down earlier does nothing.  It has become next to impossible to get my kids to bed before 9 o’clock.  Of course, this also does not mean that they sleep in the next morning.  Oh, no.  When the light peeks in through the “blackout” (yeah, right) curtains, they start tossing and turning.  They may doze on and off for a while longer, but every stir reawakens me.

    2013-06-21 Summer Nights edAt 5:01 am, I lay there and pray that they will fall back asleep.  At 5:38 am, I wonder why Bear needs to nurse again when she just did for the past half hour.  At 5:59 am, I think that no one should have to be up this early.  At 6:02 am, I debate whether or not I should get up and go to the bathroom, knowing that if I move an inch, I will wake someone under the age of five.   At 6:42 am, I am thankful that Bear fell back asleep for almost another hour (and so did I, for part of it at least).  At 6:58 am, knowing that both kids will be up for the day soon, I think how nice it would be if they each had a snooze button on their forehead.  At 7:15 am, I try to ignore the fact that I am getting jumped on by one or two tiny creatures.  At 7:16 am, someone lands on my bladder, making me rethink my 6:02 am decision.  At 7:30 am, everyone is awake and I wish I hadn’t gone to bed at 2:00 am… again.

    My point is, I guess, that I still love the summer – ice cream, beaches, carnivals, fresh fruits and veggies from our garden, and much more.  But, I could really do without the daily bedtime battle.  So, summer solstice, can you do me a favor and stay away for the next 10 years or so?  Because if you keep this up much longer, I’m going to turn into a crazy lady who starts boarding up her windows come March.  Much mahalos.

  • The Kindness of Strangers Experiment: Pizza Delivery to My Car

    How many times have you been stuck in the car with a sleeping child while wishing you could run errands, get something (anything) accomplished, or go into a store or restaurant while he or she napped? In my case, it’s almost daily.

    Although I’m not proud of it, I have had my fair share of drive through fast food over the last few months. This is due to the fact that many of my kids’ naps involve me driving in circles for hours while they snooze in the back seat. During these hours of driving aimlessly, I have had a lot of time to think about a whole lot of nothing such as why aren’t there any drive through pizza joints or Chinese food places?

    This brings me to my first experiment in my Kindness of Strangers series: Pizza Delivery to My Car.

    It was lunchtime and we were out and about. My 3 year old wanted pizza for lunch and we were headed to get some when my baby daughter fell asleep in the car earlier than expected. Since neither of my children transfer well, I couldn’t bring the car seat in to the pizza place and expect her to remain asleep. I was trying to come up with a plan. My first idea involved picking up my husband at work, driving him to the pizza place, getting him to buy a slice for my son, and having a picnic in the parking lot before returning him to his office. Somehow, I didn’t think that would go over very well. The next plan involved driving home and ordering pizza to be delivered to the house, but for only two slices, it just didn’t seem like the best choice (and it probably would have taken too long). As I was working on my next crazy idea, I looked in the rear view mirror to discover that my son was now sleeping too. Figures.

    Although his nap bought me some time, I was now starving and knew that I would not be able to wait the two hours or so until they woke up to first have lunch. And of course, I now had pizza on the brain, so that was all I wanted to eat. But, other than leaving my kids unattended in the car (which I would never do), the words that kept running through my head were “What’s a girl gotta do to get a slice around here?”

    I remembered that the pizza place close to my husband’s office has a big, glass front and there is a loading zone right in front. I thought. I pondered. I wondered. I pulled in.

    I took out my smart phone and looked up their phone number. I called.

    “Hi!” I said to the gentleman in the white t-shirt and apron at the other end of the phone. “I’m right outside of your restaurant in the gray SUV.” I waved and noticed the inquisitive look on his face. “My kids are both sound asleep in the car and, since I can’t leave them alone, I was wondering if it might be possible to get two slices delivered to my car.”

    “Uh… okay. I guess so,” he replied, and I watched as our two pieces got placed in the oven to be warmed up.

    I scrambled around looking for enough spare change to be able to pay him in cash. I figured it wasn’t quite fair to make him run back and forth just to swipe my credit card. When my food was ready, I watched him gather napkins, my slices, some plates, and plastic utensils. I planned on meeting him half-way, but of course, dropped some of the coins on the floor of the car as he made his way towards my car. I picked up the coins and found him right next to the driver’s side window. I rolled my window down, took the food, and handed him money for the pizza plus whatever extra I had (it wasn’t much, unfortunately) as a tip.

    I thanked him profusely, waved goodbye to him once he was back behind the counter, saw him smile and realize that he did a good thing, and drove off with the smell of cheesy goodness filling the car.

    Many, many thanks to the kindness of this stranger.

  • Please Wake Up So I Can Go Go!!

    This happened a while back, but I was reminded of it recently and thought I’d share:

    I live in a small, pedestrian town.  Everybody walks everywhere – to restaurants, to the park, to the supermarket, and to the library.  I meet someone I know every time I’m out.  If I am driving through town on the way home from somewhere, I almost always see friends pushing strollers or wearing their babies for an afternoon stroll.  My neighbors are usually out gardening or walking their dog.  So, why was it that on this day, I was stuck in the car with two sleeping kids, my garage was unusable due to boxes in the way, I really, really, really had to go to the bathroom, and there was not a friend or neighbor in sight?

    I drove by the restaurants.  I drove through the park.  I drove past the supermarket.  I drove by the library.  I circled my block several times figuring that at some point, one of the neighbor’s dogs was also going to have to pee.  I contemplated driving twenty minutes away to my husband’s office and asking him to come outside and rescue me.  I couldn’t, however, imagine not finding anyone in town that I knew.  Where was everyone?  Why was I suddenly in a ghost town?  It was a beautiful day – why wasn’t anyone outside?

    I’ve done some crazy things as a mom.  I once brought my son home from a nursing support group in “drag” when he pooped through his clothes and his blanket and I had to borrow clothes from my friend’s daughter.  I’ve asked a pizza parlor to deliver pizza to my car when both kids were sleeping and I couldn’t stand to eat another fast food hamburger.  But what was I to do in this situation?  I couldn’t leave my car and my children unattended, no matter how desperate I got.  If I had already purchased my son’s travel potty (which wasn’t gotten until this weekend), rest assured it would have been utilized… somehow.  Even my son’s diapers and my empty disposable coffee cup were starting to look good!

    It’s times like these (and only these) that I wish I was a boy and could, as my husband has put it, use nature as my urinal!  Ultimately, I just sat tight (pun intended) and waited until the kids woke up.  But seriously, where was everybody?  What’s a girl got to do to pee in this town?

    Is there an app for that?

  • Stay Awake! Go to Sleep!

    “Stay awake” is a phrase rarely uttered in my house.  Nine times out of ten, it’s “Go the F**k to Sleep!”  But then there are times when it’s impossible to keep the kids awake and it is terribly inconvenient for them to fall asleep on me.

    I drive around for an hour trying to get my son to nap in the car.  I finally give up because I’m getting to the point where I can no longer keep my eyes open.  Of course, he falls asleep a block away from the house.  My pleas for him to stay awake can’t be heard over his tiny snores.  I open the windows.  I turn up the radio and start singing Laurie Berkner at the top of my lungs.  I reach back and tickle his legs when stopped at a light.  Nothing.

    I rock, bounce, shush, and sway my baby daughter in my Ergo for 40 minutes while her brother is in his gymnastics class, but her big eyes are wide open and taking it all in.  Five minutes before class is over, she suddenly nestles her head against my chest and starts to doze.  Knowing full well that as soon as I attempt to extract her from the wrap and place her in the car seat she is going to scream bloody murder (our car seat is made out of hot lava), I do my darndest to keep her up.  I play with her, I poke at her, I even let her brother slobber on her, but, of course, she’s out cold.  And, as predicted, as soon as she touches the car seat, she is wide awake.  Apparently, her five minute snooze was enough to re-energize her for another hour and a half.

    Work with me, children!

  • You give me 22 minutes, I’ll give you the world!

    The 1010 WINS news slogan “You give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you the world” runs through my head every time I’m trying to put my baby girl to sleep and my toddler son wants my attention.  I have tried many times to explain to him that if he gives me a couple of uninterrupted minutes to get her to sleep, I can give him my undivided attention for the next hour or so.  I have tried to entice him with baking or special art projects or playing catch as a reward when I return.  I have tried putting on his favorite show, not telling him what I’m about to do, and sneaking upstairs.  I have tried setting him up with something new that will keep him occupied independently, but five minutes in to each of these, he’s shouting for me at the top of his lungs, thus delaying the process even more.

    My son also doesn’t seem to get that if he lets his sister stay asleep, we can, as I explained before, play more, one on one.  She doesn’t need to be poked or hear his fire truck’s siren while she’s napping.  Yes, it would be lovely for him to sing her a lullaby, but he doesn’t need to accompany himself on his drum, marching band style.  And, as nice as his hugs and kisses are, climbing into the co-sleeper to give her one while she is sleeping is not a good idea, and he should consider any dangling limbs (if she’s asleep on me in a wrap) off limits.

    I try to give him as much dedicated mommy time as I can, and I wish he would understand that it is much easier to do so when I’m not strapped to the baby for every single nap.  Why is it that he can entertain himself and seem to not need me at other times of the day, but patience, logic, and rational thinking always seem to fall by the wayside right at nap time?  If you give me 22 minutes, my son, I’ll give you the world!