Oct
24
The term “witching hour” is a common one among parents, and it seems to generally refer to the same time of day: the pre-bedtime, post-dinner zone, which in my household has become something of a daily cross to bear. We’re always trying to keep Dylan awake for just a bit longer (I’ve learned that 7 is the earliest he should go to bed, but that definitely doesn’t mean he’s a happy camper for the preceding half hour or so), we’re trying to deal with Riley who is alternating between bouncing off the walls and channeling Satan, we’re trying to bolt our own dinner, we’re simultaneously wanting to grab as much quality time with the kids as possible and wishing like hell they’d just go to bed already.
We used to deal with this time of day by taking the boys for a walk around the neighborhood, which was a perfect solution — they stayed entertained, and JB and I could chitchat while getting a little exercise. Now it’s just too damn dark outside, so we rattle irritatingly around the house like marbles in a can. Dylan gets fussier and fussier, Riley fine-tunes his ability to detonate people’s skulls with the sheer force of his whining, and I find myself staring glassy-eyed at the clock: has it really been only five minutes since the last time I looked, DEAR GOD IS THERE NO MERCY.
Those of you who have similar evening-time challenges, how do YOU deal with the Witching Hour? I could use some inspiration, because last night around 6:47 I spent a few minutes just sort of fondling a bottle of liquid Benadryl and thinking, would it really be so wrong?
I don’t even want to acknowledge Daylight Saving Time. That is going to suck, if you’ll pardon the expression, a giant bag of baboon assholes.
Oct
22
Earlier today I was wondering out loud what to do with Dylan, who was rolling around on the carpet fussing angrily — was he hungry, was it naptime, etc — and Riley looked up briefly from his pirate ship toy and said, “He wants to go in the bouncy seat, Mommy.” So I put Dylan in the bouncy seat and that was in fact exactly what he wanted.
Huh.
As I type this they are both tucked into bed for afternoon naps, and if there is any greater feeling than concurrent naptimes I do not know what it is. Dylan didn’t even issue his normal ear-splitting protests about being put down, he just curled up like a fat cocktail shrimp and zonked right out, and . . . people, he’s sleeping in the crib.
I figured since our nights had already gone to hell sleepwise I’d end the swing addiction once and for all, so on Monday I dismantled the Fisher Price Nature’s Touch-of-Heroin Baby Papasan Swing, then stuffed it in the back of my car (knowing that if I didn’t get it out of my house completely I’d be putting the damn thing back together at 3 AM). Not surprisingly, Monday night was — um, pretty bad. You know how in Blair Witch Project the nights get consecutively worse until it’s just, like, a sphincter-loosening melee of incomprehensible, insufferable horror? Yeah, it was kind of like that.
Last night was a vast improvement, so I guess he’s getting used to the new sleeping arrangement. I’m also tapering off how often I go in there when he wakes up, Ferber-style, and that does seem to be helping. Also, thanks to the genius recommendation of someone in the comments here the other day, I stuck in some earplugs during some wee hour of the night after he’d woken up and I’d tended to him and he was still complaining, and they were a godsend. I could still hear him, so I could tell if the fussing was going from Angry to Sorrowful, but the sound wasn’t boring directly into my skull in the same anxiety-producing way. He groused for maybe ten minutes, and that was it until 7 AM.
Who knows what tonight will bring, but I am hoping the worst is over.
There’s always a Challenging Thing in parenthood, isn’t there? When they’re little, it’s the Sleeping Thing, or the Potty Thing, maybe an Eating Thing, or a Friends At School Thing. And I don’t even want to think about all the Things in store for us when they’re older. Oh, the THINGS.
In Barbara Kingsolver’s book of essays Small Wonder, she writes (in the essay “Letter to a Daughter at Thirteen”), “When I was pregnant with you, I read every book I could find on how to handle all things from diaper rash to warning lectures on sexually transmitted diseases. I became so appalled by the size of the task that I put my hands on my belly and thought, Oh Lord, can we just back up? But the minute you were born I looked at your hungry, squinched little face and got it: We do this thing one minute at a time. We’ll never have to handle diaper rash and the sex lecture in the same day. My most important work will change from year to year, and I’ll have time to figure it out.”
It’s true that I doubt JB and I will ever be in a situation where we’re explaining S.E.X. to one kid while still wiping the other’s ass (please no), but my most important work is different with my 8-month-old than with my three year old. There is twice as much work, and it’s all important, and is there really time to figure it all out, because dude, I’m not always so sure.
She’s right, though, that we deal with everything one minute at a time. We are project managers, us parents, breaking the enormity of the overall task into manageable pieces. Now I am changing someone’s diaper. Now I am cooking someone’s dinner. And the Challenging Things are so often put into perspective by the more important things: Now I am feeling a baby’s hand trail wonderingly through my hair while a toddler curls against my side and tells me a story about cows.
… they’re still napping. It’s like some wonderful plot device sent to cut me a break today; like dude, Monday seriously shit the bed, we get it, how about a really fantastic naptime to make up for it? GRATIAS AGO VOS, DEUS EX MACHINA.
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