| Let Them Have Sleep! | | Date Created: Jun 05, 2007, 12:07 PM |
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Things have been pretty good around here lately. This picture is of John and James playing golf. John's beloved recorder mouthpiece is the tee and I'm not sure what James is doing.
The boys’ school is over but for six weeks they have a summertime program that is two mornings a week. So having only two mornings without the guys is keeping me from playing as much tennis and writing as many blogs, but so far it hasn’t been as difficult as I’d been expecting. We’re finding plenty of things to do. Mostly going outside as soon as everyone wakes up from nap or comes out of their room after not napping. We’ve been to the beach twice in the last two weeks and it’s been so much better than last year! There is a positive side to John’s recently developed fears of water and crabs. He doesn’t run head-first into the waves while George runs one way down the beach toward teenage girls in bikinis and James runs the opposite screaming about the sand on his hands. They are now cautious enough not to run anywhere without me or each other. Well, at least John and James are. I can--most of the time--handle one renegade (George, of course). Now they play in the gully and find a piece of pirate ship! (broken oyster shell) Make a sand castle! (while another brother tears it down from the back side) Throw wet sand! (that’s a no-no) Truck water back and forth in buckets! (or better yet get a sweet friend to do it since mean mama refuses) Catch fish! (the fish have nothing to worry about considering George and his yellow shovel as the fisherman and his tackle) Overall, both times have been so much fun and I think I could even take them by myself if we made a no-swimming rule. I think it’s going to be a great summer!
The boys are going through a huge spurt right now—they’re not necessarily getting any bigger, but they look older. And their thoughts and imaginations are really taking off. It used to be that in the mornings while Will fixed their breakfast and I got their clothes together they used to be completely absorbed in Curious George and Clifford cartoons in the TV room. Now they’d rather pile on my divan which is now the fire truck or on the sofa in the living room which is the pirate ship or in James room which is the castle. They are playing really well together. Except for the few occasions when George or James steals one of John’s odd items just for the kick of John’s reaction. His latest collection of weird objects that must go with him wherever he goes includes the mouthpiece of a plastic recorder (the instrument of choice for the five-and-under set) with a plastic stick through it and a pump for blowing up balls.
As the boys’ vocabulary grows, so apparently do their hearing and understanding. I can be downstairs talking to Will and James could be upstairs in his room and I can say something such as, “What a long day” or “James drove me nuts today” and James will yell down, “What did you say, Momoe?” or “What are you talking about?” We’ve had to be a lot more careful about what I discuss around them. And a lot more conservative in what we consider “within earshot”.
But the more their vocabulary grows maybe the murkier their understanding…For example, they have lots of matchbox cars. One is a black Range Rover I’d never really noticed before and certainly hadn’t discussed with them. George held it up to me yesterday and asked, “It’s a raindriver? It can drive in the rain all by itself?”
Then during the same conversation he said, “I was made in China. Everything is made in China. Stripesy [his stuffed zebra] was made in China and then he moved to Atfridda and then he walked to ours old house and then he walked here.”
Later, he actually spelled “zebra”! Then he said, “What do X-O spell?
And I said, “Well, that means kisses and hugs.”
And he said, “No! It spells ‘ox’!”
Maybe one day he will be able to spell words other than animal-related ones. He can spell his own name, but being the ultimate animal-lover that still fits his MO.
Last night we had everyone from Will’s office over for supper. We had a really good time, and I have to say I really enjoyed preparing for it. I hate to clean, so that part wasn’t fun, but putting grocery store flowers in containers, baking cake and pie, making pink lemonade in a pitcher—it was fun. It’s sad how much I enjoy a project. Something out of the ordinary that takes all my attention and that has nothing to do with the boys. I guess it’s what’s called a job to most people, but that notion is foreign to me these days. Would I be happier if I had a job right now? It’s hard to imagine because I don’t know what my job would be. Before the boys I taught high school English. I’d love to return to that if it were from 8 – 4, but even though you get out early in the day there are so many papers to grade and bibliography cards to check and research papers to investigate for the ever-present dark cloud of intentional/unintentional plagiarism. Sundays were always miserable for all of the take-home work I had to get done before the next day. I stayed up past midnight pretty regularly. And let’s face it—I can’t do that these days!
Speaking of which, last night I was so exhausted my legs throbbed and my head ached. Will and I worked together quickly to get the boys down and the post-party cleaned up. Then we settled in with magazines in bed and slipped off into a deep sleep. And then John started to moan. And then he started to cry. And Will went in to talk to him. And then I did. It was like talking to a trapped animal—he couldn’t hear us even if he wanted to with all of his wailing and moaning. We might as well have been speaking another language. Maybe that would have helped.
Will has such a better bedside manner than I do. My reaction is, “You’re kidding me! I’ve worked hard all day, and tonight of all nights I need my sleep, and you are exhausted yourself from forcing all of the guys from the party to play baseball, tennis, and badminton with you until you were all sweaty and needed a bath. You of all people should be sleeping like a log! Why? Why? Why?” Then the second-to-the-worst-case scenario happened (waking James being the worst of all possible outcomes)—John’s crying woke up George. When George wakes up in the middle of the night it’s usually because he’s had a bad dream and he tells you about it (usually angry tigers) and then goes back to sleep. But when he is woken up by something else, he cries and whimpers and hyper-ventilates and there is no talking to him that he will respond to. It goes on and on and on. At one point I was only up with the boys to show Will I did care and didn’t want him to be the only one losing sleep, but really I was just standing/slumping over the boys’ beds while he dealt with them. If I’d tried to comfort them back to sleep it would have been more like a pillow fight without the giggles. Finally, we rubbed George’s back and I did offer as soothing a chorus as I could muster of shhhhhhhhhh over and over again. He finally drifted off and then Will tended to John who apparently started snoring as soon as Will rearranged his blanket and put his disgusting spit-wet “string” from it on John’s face. We got back in bed, John started crying again, but we were both so tired we fell asleep anyway. Nights like last night are why I don’t think I could hold down a job right now even if someone thought they should hire me. But to get back to my original point—I can understand why some stay-at-home mothers get so caught up in the wallpaper for the powder room or the homemade chicken salad for the tennis team. Little projects are something we can do that uses some effort and some thinking, but not so much that we can’t do it and still manage staying up all night begging a twitching and turning three-foot screaming log wrapped up in a blanket, “For the love of your mother and father and God and your brothers please please please please be quiet and go to sleep!”
Postscript: John slept until 9:00 this morning. Lucky little stinker!
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