March 2014
It had been an epic week of terrible-toddler antics and weather so unseasonably cold, it seemed to imply our world was actually hell in the process of freezing over. But on Friday, the clouds finally parted, the temperature rose above Arctic, the baby slept a few good nights in a row, and the toddler finally ended his boycott of pooping on the toilet long enough for us to all get a break from the souring effect his reluctance to defecate had cast upon the household. Ray had already enjoyed two days off and the elation of finishing his weekend to-dos before the weekend even started. I'd worked a decent week with a respectably full therapy schedule and had wrapped up my Friday feeling reasonably confident in my earnings for the week.
Since Ray was already home soaking up the PTO when I called it a day, we made it out to dinner by 5:30 with more than an hour of daylight to spare on this first day of spring. The four outdoor tables at our family-friendliest go-to restaurant were already packed, so Ray tossed out the unexpected suggestion to sit outside at “the nice place" across the street. They served steaks, Pinot noir, and French-press coffee over white table cloths to people who could linger for a leisurely dessert. We, meanwhile, were still deeply entrenched in the vinyl-boothed abyss of Chicken-Fingerland, where crayons are complementary but guarantees that your kids' behavior will permit finishing the meal are not. Typically, the thought of taking our traveling circus to “the nice place" would've summoned an eruption of laughter comparable to dry-heaving in its intensity. But today, the suggestion elicited a simple "Why the hell not?"
A brief walk-by of recon revealed that just one unsuspecting table of outdoor diners would suffer the clanging cluster-F of our typical dinner drama, and as the hostess led us to the patio, we took a moment to feel guilty for unanimously deciding that Couple X would be taking this one for Team Us. We told ourselves that the sun, the breeze, and a soothing beer buzz would dilute the din we created into a noxious yet quickly dissipating mist, rather than the suffocating sh$& storm of demands and refusals it often seemed like at our own kitchen table on any other cold, dreary evening. We indignantly unpacked our full complement of sippy cups and finger foods, and ordered two pints in a steadfast commitment to stand our ground, for better or worse.
It had been an epic week of terrible-toddler antics and weather so unseasonably cold, it seemed to imply our world was actually hell in the process of freezing over. But on Friday, the clouds finally parted, the temperature rose above Arctic, the baby slept a few good nights in a row, and the toddler finally ended his boycott of pooping on the toilet long enough for us to all get a break from the souring effect his reluctance to defecate had cast upon the household. Ray had already enjoyed two days off and the elation of finishing his weekend to-dos before the weekend even started. I'd worked a decent week with a respectably full therapy schedule and had wrapped up my Friday feeling reasonably confident in my earnings for the week.
Since Ray was already home soaking up the PTO when I called it a day, we made it out to dinner by 5:30 with more than an hour of daylight to spare on this first day of spring. The four outdoor tables at our family-friendliest go-to restaurant were already packed, so Ray tossed out the unexpected suggestion to sit outside at “the nice place" across the street. They served steaks, Pinot noir, and French-press coffee over white table cloths to people who could linger for a leisurely dessert. We, meanwhile, were still deeply entrenched in the vinyl-boothed abyss of Chicken-Fingerland, where crayons are complementary but guarantees that your kids' behavior will permit finishing the meal are not. Typically, the thought of taking our traveling circus to “the nice place" would've summoned an eruption of laughter comparable to dry-heaving in its intensity. But today, the suggestion elicited a simple "Why the hell not?"
A brief walk-by of recon revealed that just one unsuspecting table of outdoor diners would suffer the clanging cluster-F of our typical dinner drama, and as the hostess led us to the patio, we took a moment to feel guilty for unanimously deciding that Couple X would be taking this one for Team Us. We told ourselves that the sun, the breeze, and a soothing beer buzz would dilute the din we created into a noxious yet quickly dissipating mist, rather than the suffocating sh$& storm of demands and refusals it often seemed like at our own kitchen table on any other cold, dreary evening. We indignantly unpacked our full complement of sippy cups and finger foods, and ordered two pints in a steadfast commitment to stand our ground, for better or worse.
It was two weeks shy of a
year ago, that Ray and I had sat indoors at this same restaurant as our last
dinner date before the scheduled delivery of my second son. My first attempt at
birthing a baby had been a rough ride, ending in surgical removal of my
squalling bundle and a level of exhaustion that rendered me useless for days.
For Round 2, we'd decided to go with the mani-pedi style option, where you show
up for your "procedure", packed and showered in your maternity yoga
pants and carefully applied mascara. As we drove to what we'd
affectionately dubbed "The Last Supper" at “the nice place", “February
7” by the Avett Brothers was playing in the car, seeming to assure us that this
time we were "rested and...ready to begin".
Well...yes and no. I think we could now agree that YES, we might've been more ready (and less traumatized by the birthing process)-- but NO, we could never have been rested enough to prepare for the sleep deprivation of adding a newborn to the already demanding task of dealing with a 2-year-old. I know people used to--and still do--pump out litters of children, so I understand how ridiculous I sound mourning the loss of sleep incurred by just two little kids. But I know that even my own mother of five remembers the transition from one kid to two as particularly tough. For me, there was the initial dread of both boys waking up simultaneously in the morning after I'd slept for less than 2 consecutive hours myself. This was then compounded by Grunting Baby Syndrome, a charmingly benign digestive issue that caused the baby to grunt like a pig all night while he slept and required me to whisk the baby to the far reaches of the dark house before he woke the whole family. Later, came the full nights of sleep lost to persistent ear infections for both boys, the daily grind of waking up early and staying up late to pump milk, the arduous battle of wills and whining the toddler's bedtime routine had become, the baby's near-constant teething, and the struggle to squirt pain meds and antibiotics into a moving target that ejected half of every dose like he was auditioning for Exorcist Junior.
No. Nothing could've rested us enough for all that. It truly had worn us down to tattered nubs of raw, exposed nerves. But on the cozy patio of “the nice place", as I held a struggling baby on my hip, eating beef poutine standing up with the toddler calling for his milk cup and trying to fall off the bench--I realized that, while rested I am not, I'm more relaxed than ever in some ways. A year ago, a meal at a restaurant like this--where finger-foods were ground directly into the bare table top and I stood for half the dinner to keep a kid from screaming like a pterodactyl and leaping from the high chair--would have been a nightmare. I might've cried, really. But tonight, we were able to laugh at it and still manage to clear our plates, finish our pints, feed both kids, and congratulate ourselves for making it out to the restaurant early enough to get a seat where nobody was pissed at us for bringing this mess to the nicest sit-down establishment in town.
When the clock struck 6:30, we took pity on the growing assembly of patio diners and asked for the check. With Dexter-like precision, we wiped down our kids, the floor, and the table and packed up our remaining paraphernalia so that our table's aftermath looked less like ground zero and more like what any other 4-top might have produced. We made it home in time for bath, feeling triumphant--even when the night veered into infant-fatigue meltdown and a losing battle with the toddler over putting the poop we knew was coming in the potty (instead of blowing up his night diaper the second we put it on him). Naturally, the baby woke me in the wee hours, moaning in his sleep from teething pain, and as expected, the toddler woke up in the morning having laid a stink bomb so potent that his comforter still smelled like it at nap time half a day later.
Nevertheless, the previous evening had been so unexpectedly lovely that its charms seeped into the following day. We enjoyed every second of outside-time we could--a stroll around the lake, a playground visit, lunch on the deck, dinner on the porch, and a long walk on the greenway with both kids behaving at sunset. It was a truly nice Saturday. Sunday's high would be 55, initiating an unnatural decline into the 20s over the next two days with winter weather in the forecast AGAIN by Wednesday. My mood soured with the weather as we all prepared to walk that Green Mile back into the work week.
But so it goes. The tide of tedium and tantrums and intolerable routines will ebb and flow, buoying us up and down, back and forth between basking in the glow of these lives we've created and spewing curse words into the ether, while we squint into the dark distance for the slightest hint of light at the end of whatever developmental tunnel sucks us in next. It's easy to get overwhelmed, so I felt compelled to write this weekend down. Because this is the glow. This is the light. And looking back, I won't see the interior of the tunnel, but the verdant landscape all around it, backlit by a pink and orange sky.
Well...yes and no. I think we could now agree that YES, we might've been more ready (and less traumatized by the birthing process)-- but NO, we could never have been rested enough to prepare for the sleep deprivation of adding a newborn to the already demanding task of dealing with a 2-year-old. I know people used to--and still do--pump out litters of children, so I understand how ridiculous I sound mourning the loss of sleep incurred by just two little kids. But I know that even my own mother of five remembers the transition from one kid to two as particularly tough. For me, there was the initial dread of both boys waking up simultaneously in the morning after I'd slept for less than 2 consecutive hours myself. This was then compounded by Grunting Baby Syndrome, a charmingly benign digestive issue that caused the baby to grunt like a pig all night while he slept and required me to whisk the baby to the far reaches of the dark house before he woke the whole family. Later, came the full nights of sleep lost to persistent ear infections for both boys, the daily grind of waking up early and staying up late to pump milk, the arduous battle of wills and whining the toddler's bedtime routine had become, the baby's near-constant teething, and the struggle to squirt pain meds and antibiotics into a moving target that ejected half of every dose like he was auditioning for Exorcist Junior.
No. Nothing could've rested us enough for all that. It truly had worn us down to tattered nubs of raw, exposed nerves. But on the cozy patio of “the nice place", as I held a struggling baby on my hip, eating beef poutine standing up with the toddler calling for his milk cup and trying to fall off the bench--I realized that, while rested I am not, I'm more relaxed than ever in some ways. A year ago, a meal at a restaurant like this--where finger-foods were ground directly into the bare table top and I stood for half the dinner to keep a kid from screaming like a pterodactyl and leaping from the high chair--would have been a nightmare. I might've cried, really. But tonight, we were able to laugh at it and still manage to clear our plates, finish our pints, feed both kids, and congratulate ourselves for making it out to the restaurant early enough to get a seat where nobody was pissed at us for bringing this mess to the nicest sit-down establishment in town.
When the clock struck 6:30, we took pity on the growing assembly of patio diners and asked for the check. With Dexter-like precision, we wiped down our kids, the floor, and the table and packed up our remaining paraphernalia so that our table's aftermath looked less like ground zero and more like what any other 4-top might have produced. We made it home in time for bath, feeling triumphant--even when the night veered into infant-fatigue meltdown and a losing battle with the toddler over putting the poop we knew was coming in the potty (instead of blowing up his night diaper the second we put it on him). Naturally, the baby woke me in the wee hours, moaning in his sleep from teething pain, and as expected, the toddler woke up in the morning having laid a stink bomb so potent that his comforter still smelled like it at nap time half a day later.
Nevertheless, the previous evening had been so unexpectedly lovely that its charms seeped into the following day. We enjoyed every second of outside-time we could--a stroll around the lake, a playground visit, lunch on the deck, dinner on the porch, and a long walk on the greenway with both kids behaving at sunset. It was a truly nice Saturday. Sunday's high would be 55, initiating an unnatural decline into the 20s over the next two days with winter weather in the forecast AGAIN by Wednesday. My mood soured with the weather as we all prepared to walk that Green Mile back into the work week.
But so it goes. The tide of tedium and tantrums and intolerable routines will ebb and flow, buoying us up and down, back and forth between basking in the glow of these lives we've created and spewing curse words into the ether, while we squint into the dark distance for the slightest hint of light at the end of whatever developmental tunnel sucks us in next. It's easy to get overwhelmed, so I felt compelled to write this weekend down. Because this is the glow. This is the light. And looking back, I won't see the interior of the tunnel, but the verdant landscape all around it, backlit by a pink and orange sky.
What a good way to ground yourself. If blogging keeps your head clear then I say keep it up. You're doing wonderful.
ReplyDeleteLove this. Especially the Dexter reference. Love that very much.
ReplyDelete