Getting pregnant with my first son was a little more difficult than expected. It was nothing a few doses of fertility meds couldn’t light a fire under—but enough to impart the panicked realization that not everybody can get pregnant. Not knowing how long our second attempt would take, we “pulled the goalie”(as Ray would say) shortly after our oldest son’s first birthday, expecting at least a month or two of crickets chirping in the background of negative pregnancy tests before I had to go back for more fertility assistance. Less than a month later, however, I was pregnant. And by the time my oldest was a mere 22 months old, I was the proud mother of two sons—the second of which has continued to surprise me with his own time table and personality tics for the past 3 years now.
He got his first tooth at 3 months old, along with his first series of ear infections. This meant the blissful 5 hours of night-time sleep we’d worked so hard to establish during his first 12 weeks was tragically interrupted--usually from about 2 am to 4 am, most nights--until we’d all finally suffered enough for the ENT to green-light the miracle of tubes.After that, my second son gradually started sleeping again, but continued to demonstrate a pattern of periodically waking up and staying up between the God-forsaken hours of 2 and 4, a stretch of time when even the bars have closed and even the drunks have stumbled home to pass out. There was one poor bastard in the neighborhood whose car I’d hear clunk over speed bump in front of my house on his/her drive to work shortly after 4 am. But between 2 and 4, it was just me…my thoughts...and my second son. Who would…not...SLEEP.
His sleeplessness was almost always tied to teething or some ailment contracted while teething—which led me to wonder if I’d given birth to a baby shark whose multiple rows of teeth would eventually compel me to bust through the drywall like the Koolaid Man (as Ray would say) before his last pearly white had finished erupting. Fortunately for him, as Ray and I have often agreed, our second son has always struck a balance between endearing and infuriating that’s offset just enough in a positive direction to keep us from dropping him off at the fire station.
He’s stubborn, particular, and will commit to a meltdown like his life depends on the making of “hot nums”, a term he’s used for his gently microwaved morning milk ever since he crossed over from nursing to Vitamin D almost 2 years ago. Every day begins and ends with a list of demands regarding what he does or does not want. He wants cereal but not that one. He wants Lucky Charms but only the marshmallows. He doesn’t want to kiss Daddy goodbye when he leaves for work, but will then cry all the way out into the driveway as his car pulls away because he didn’t get to say “bye” on his terms. He wants to go see his friend, but not share any toys. He wants to watch the Cars movie, but only the first and last scenes. He wants to watch “shows” but only Paw Patrol or Blaze and The Monster Machines, preferably an episode he’s already seen roughly one thousand times. Toys must submit to his will at all times, forsaking even the laws of gravity that keep knocking over his meticulously placed dinosaurs (that Mommy keeps insisting won’t stand up on carpet). He doesn’t want Mommy to use her “mad face”, but will also be God-damned if he’ll poop on the potty without making a federal case out of it, “mad face” or not. And he’ll sleep like an angel most nights. Unless he doesn’t.
On one of those nights, after the tubes but before we dismantled the crib, he was up for no particular reason, screaming “MOMMY!”, bloody-murder style, until I ran in there to see what body part had been chopped off in his sleep to elicit such a sound. When I saw that he was fine and not covered in blood, vomit, or even snot, I attempted to tuck him back in and go back to bed myself several times before saying, “screw it” and making myself a pile of blankets on his floor. I tried everything I could to get him back down, including holding his hand through the crib slats until I thought he was asleep. I’d slowly pull away and try to crawl out the door…but he’d pop right back up, again with the “MOMMY!” just as loud as he could muster. I gave up on the hand-holding and opted for tough love, pretending to be asleep on his floor until a quiet stillness ensued. Almost 10 minutes passed…before he popped up and down again with a smile on his face, attempting to initiate peek-a-boo with such gleeful audacity, it probably deserved a Spirit Award of some sort. In spite of his cuteness, however, Mommy’s mad face eventually won the night and I woke from a fitful sleep on the floor to the light of day beside my second son, who was now so imperturbably passed out that I could’ve slammed the door on my way out as I stomped off to prepare for the day.
Just the other night, long since his graduation from crib to toddler bed, I awoke yet again to his screaming. “I scared of the dark, Mommy,” he told me as I squinted at him from the hallway, where the light from the laundry room was nearly blinding me as it streamed through his doorway, directly into his eye sockets. Although I assured him that it could not be less dark in his room than if we were standing on the bold face of the sun itself, he convinced me that the addition of the even brighter hallway light would be his ticket back to Dreamland. Ten to fifteen minutes later, he called me back in to rectify an errant set of blankets that had mischievously gone askew, and then again ten to fifteen minutes later, to assure him that our house was, in fact, made of bricks and lacked a chimney, rendering it impenetrable to the Big Bad Wolf.
Then, just when I thought he had fallen back to sleep… “Mommy…hey, Mommy,” he whispered, as I clambered to his door with gritted teeth and balled-up fists. “Hey, Mommy…” He continued in a clandestine tone. “Do ‘zactly what I tell you to do…Roar at the Big Bad Wolf.”
I looked at his chubby little face, peering up at me, blankets pulled to his chin so tightly, it looked like a head with no body nestled in that pile of stuffed animals and bedding. And he had me. I was still angry, but no longer at him, this tiny little person whose little wheels had been turning for nearly an hour in the semi-darkness to come up with a solution that was plausibly acceptable to him. “Yes, baby. That’s a good idea.” And I roared. Ever so quietly before trying in vain to go back to sleep.
Like so much else in his little life, my second son had to arrive at it on his own terms, but was ultimately soothed back to sleep by the logic of his own solution. Unfortunately, his older brother was up about a half-hour later, needing something—at which point, I permanently abandoned my bed for the bonus-room couch, to prevent my enraged tossing-and-turning from keeping Ray awake as well. I’d already jarred him from sleep at least once to take his turn investigating a “mommy” call and had later scolded him for breathing too loud when my own frustration and the glaring light from the hallway had rendered me absolutely sleepless and uber-sensitive to even the most necessary of sounds.
Sleep finally snuck up on me just before the sun came up, but not before I realized I hadn’t spent the night on this couch since my younger son was an infant, when I would whisk him away to the far corners of the house to snuggle him in the dark and keep him from waking everyone else up. It tugged on my heart just a little to remember how that red, wrinkled little nugget that had robbed me of sleep so many nights and to acknowledge that sleepless nights of solving bedtime problems for my kids would soon be distant memories, too. A well-earned milestone, for sure. But a bittersweet one, no doubt.
At this point, I'm convinced that our second son will either be a visionary engineer, imagining new inventive ways to fit all the square pegs of life into the round holes of the world…or the type of guy who shoots up a McDonald’s because they stopped selling his McRib. He’s the son who’ll go from sweet to psycho in a second, but he’s also the son who’s more sincere in his “I’m sorry, Mommy”, more forthcoming with “I love you”, and more inclined to an say an unsolicited, “Thank you for 'dis delicious dinner, Mommy” when I indulge his meager palate with a pile of buttered noodles. He’s even taken to asking, “You have a good day, Daddy?” upon Ray’s arrival home. He steals the spotlight for his own dramatic retelling of The Three Little Pigs and turns every lost household item into his version of "The Mystery Bandit" from Blaze and The Monster Machines, inviting us to “follow dese muddy tire tracks” to whatever place he thinks it might be. He smiles with his whole face, loves with his whole heart, and makes us laugh with our whole being on a daily basis. He has been the bearer of so many blessings (and the inspiration for so many curses) over the past 3 years. And I wait with a mom’s bittersweet anticipation as his personal set of “muddy tire tracks” continues to unfold, leading far past the local fire station and out into a world that won’t know what hit them.
He’s stubborn, particular, and will commit to a meltdown like his life depends on the making of “hot nums”, a term he’s used for his gently microwaved morning milk ever since he crossed over from nursing to Vitamin D almost 2 years ago. Every day begins and ends with a list of demands regarding what he does or does not want. He wants cereal but not that one. He wants Lucky Charms but only the marshmallows. He doesn’t want to kiss Daddy goodbye when he leaves for work, but will then cry all the way out into the driveway as his car pulls away because he didn’t get to say “bye” on his terms. He wants to go see his friend, but not share any toys. He wants to watch the Cars movie, but only the first and last scenes. He wants to watch “shows” but only Paw Patrol or Blaze and The Monster Machines, preferably an episode he’s already seen roughly one thousand times. Toys must submit to his will at all times, forsaking even the laws of gravity that keep knocking over his meticulously placed dinosaurs (that Mommy keeps insisting won’t stand up on carpet). He doesn’t want Mommy to use her “mad face”, but will also be God-damned if he’ll poop on the potty without making a federal case out of it, “mad face” or not. And he’ll sleep like an angel most nights. Unless he doesn’t.
On one of those nights, after the tubes but before we dismantled the crib, he was up for no particular reason, screaming “MOMMY!”, bloody-murder style, until I ran in there to see what body part had been chopped off in his sleep to elicit such a sound. When I saw that he was fine and not covered in blood, vomit, or even snot, I attempted to tuck him back in and go back to bed myself several times before saying, “screw it” and making myself a pile of blankets on his floor. I tried everything I could to get him back down, including holding his hand through the crib slats until I thought he was asleep. I’d slowly pull away and try to crawl out the door…but he’d pop right back up, again with the “MOMMY!” just as loud as he could muster. I gave up on the hand-holding and opted for tough love, pretending to be asleep on his floor until a quiet stillness ensued. Almost 10 minutes passed…before he popped up and down again with a smile on his face, attempting to initiate peek-a-boo with such gleeful audacity, it probably deserved a Spirit Award of some sort. In spite of his cuteness, however, Mommy’s mad face eventually won the night and I woke from a fitful sleep on the floor to the light of day beside my second son, who was now so imperturbably passed out that I could’ve slammed the door on my way out as I stomped off to prepare for the day.
Just the other night, long since his graduation from crib to toddler bed, I awoke yet again to his screaming. “I scared of the dark, Mommy,” he told me as I squinted at him from the hallway, where the light from the laundry room was nearly blinding me as it streamed through his doorway, directly into his eye sockets. Although I assured him that it could not be less dark in his room than if we were standing on the bold face of the sun itself, he convinced me that the addition of the even brighter hallway light would be his ticket back to Dreamland. Ten to fifteen minutes later, he called me back in to rectify an errant set of blankets that had mischievously gone askew, and then again ten to fifteen minutes later, to assure him that our house was, in fact, made of bricks and lacked a chimney, rendering it impenetrable to the Big Bad Wolf.
Then, just when I thought he had fallen back to sleep… “Mommy…hey, Mommy,” he whispered, as I clambered to his door with gritted teeth and balled-up fists. “Hey, Mommy…” He continued in a clandestine tone. “Do ‘zactly what I tell you to do…Roar at the Big Bad Wolf.”
I looked at his chubby little face, peering up at me, blankets pulled to his chin so tightly, it looked like a head with no body nestled in that pile of stuffed animals and bedding. And he had me. I was still angry, but no longer at him, this tiny little person whose little wheels had been turning for nearly an hour in the semi-darkness to come up with a solution that was plausibly acceptable to him. “Yes, baby. That’s a good idea.” And I roared. Ever so quietly before trying in vain to go back to sleep.
Like so much else in his little life, my second son had to arrive at it on his own terms, but was ultimately soothed back to sleep by the logic of his own solution. Unfortunately, his older brother was up about a half-hour later, needing something—at which point, I permanently abandoned my bed for the bonus-room couch, to prevent my enraged tossing-and-turning from keeping Ray awake as well. I’d already jarred him from sleep at least once to take his turn investigating a “mommy” call and had later scolded him for breathing too loud when my own frustration and the glaring light from the hallway had rendered me absolutely sleepless and uber-sensitive to even the most necessary of sounds.
Sleep finally snuck up on me just before the sun came up, but not before I realized I hadn’t spent the night on this couch since my younger son was an infant, when I would whisk him away to the far corners of the house to snuggle him in the dark and keep him from waking everyone else up. It tugged on my heart just a little to remember how that red, wrinkled little nugget that had robbed me of sleep so many nights and to acknowledge that sleepless nights of solving bedtime problems for my kids would soon be distant memories, too. A well-earned milestone, for sure. But a bittersweet one, no doubt.
At this point, I'm convinced that our second son will either be a visionary engineer, imagining new inventive ways to fit all the square pegs of life into the round holes of the world…or the type of guy who shoots up a McDonald’s because they stopped selling his McRib. He’s the son who’ll go from sweet to psycho in a second, but he’s also the son who’s more sincere in his “I’m sorry, Mommy”, more forthcoming with “I love you”, and more inclined to an say an unsolicited, “Thank you for 'dis delicious dinner, Mommy” when I indulge his meager palate with a pile of buttered noodles. He’s even taken to asking, “You have a good day, Daddy?” upon Ray’s arrival home. He steals the spotlight for his own dramatic retelling of The Three Little Pigs and turns every lost household item into his version of "The Mystery Bandit" from Blaze and The Monster Machines, inviting us to “follow dese muddy tire tracks” to whatever place he thinks it might be. He smiles with his whole face, loves with his whole heart, and makes us laugh with our whole being on a daily basis. He has been the bearer of so many blessings (and the inspiration for so many curses) over the past 3 years. And I wait with a mom’s bittersweet anticipation as his personal set of “muddy tire tracks” continues to unfold, leading far past the local fire station and out into a world that won’t know what hit them.
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