Be Careful What You Wish For…

I joked to Dorian over dinner at meetup last Thursday that the only thing I could ask for would be for GeekBaby to be able to go potty at night all by himself.  He’s been out of diapers full time for months now, but if he has to go potty in the night, he comes and wakes me up so I can help him.

Last night, I was woken by the hall bathroom light, and the sound of my son using the potty.  I heard him flush the toilet, wash his hands, and then the light was out and he was back in bed.  

And I was suddenly so sad.  My baby didn’t need me as much anymore.  I got up and crept into his bedroom to make sure he was tucked in warmly – it was pretty cold last night – but he was perfectly snug in his nest of blankets.

So I went back to bed and feeling pretty dang sorry for myself, a state of affairs only to be resolved by the appearance of my child who couldn’t go back to sleep after his display of independence.  He crawled into bed in between us and proceeded to rustle around and/or snore for the next four hours, until I opened my eyes at eight to find him peering at me, inches from my face.  He gave me an angelic smile and proclaimed he was ‘starving’.

And, mindful of how bad I felt when I thought he didn’t need me, instead of being cranky about my interrupted sleep, I got up and made waffles and bacon.

And coffee.

Mass Hysteria

Well, I made the bulletin yesterday, and not in a good way.

Let’s back up a week, shall we.

We overslept last Sunday, and ended up at the 11:30 am Mass instead of attending the 7:30 am Mass as usual. This was a recipe for disaster.

There’s a reason, an excellent reason, for why we make a huge effort to go to Mass so early. It’s because it’s the only Mass where we can get GeekBaby to behave tolerably. At all. The 9:30 am is filled with kids he wants to play with and the 11:30 am falls on the early edge of his naptime. But I figured, since we all slept so late, maybe he could cope with the 11:30. And I was wrong. Terribly, awfully, horrifically wrong.

He was so bad last Sunday (we’ll get to how bad in a little bit) that after Communion, I marched him outside and collapsed into sobs. I was too tired even to spank him for his naughtiness. I was exhausted, bruised, and humiliated, and just wanted to go home.

And of course a crying young woman outside of the church draws attention. One of the ushers came and asked if I was alright, so I rallied and said I was fine, just that he’d been so naughty in Mass that I was tired and frustrated. No, I didn’t need anything. No, I was not going to bring him back inside the air conditioning. No, we didn’t need any bottled water. Just leave me alone! I didn’t say that last one, but boy, did I ever want to.

That usher, while I recognize that he meant well, was rude and condescending to me. He told me GeekBaby was probably just full of energy, and that he couldn’t have been that bad. All I wanted was for him to go away and leave me in peace to try and collect myself and wait for the Mass to end so we could all go home.

This week, there was a letter praising that usher in the bulletin. I excerpt here the part that has me steamed under the collar today.

“I noticed a young woman sitting on the ground outside the front entrance of the church when I was leaving Sunday. She was…sobbing, with her head down. There was also a small child who appeared to be well mannered standing beside her as she wept.

I stood just in earshot and listened to his kind conversation with her. Turned out that she was upset because her son…was ‘just not behaving himself’.

Hearing that, and as a father of 5 sons, I decided it was probably ok to leave, thinking to myself that if she’s this upset now, wait till he turns 13!”

Dear reader, that day during Mass, my son called me an idiot and a jerk. He spat on me repeatedly, slapped me twice, kicked me in the shins, and severely pinched me on a delicate portion of my anatomy. I had to wrestle him all through Mass, not because I was trying to enforce some ridiculous idea of him sitting perfectly still (an impossible task!), but because wherever I was, my position somehow offended him and needed to be shoved or yanked into a different one… I could go on, but I won’t. There’s no point dwelling on all the minutia.

But while violent and rude to me, he hadn’t actually gotten loud enough yet for me to struggle out from the middle of the pew with him thrashing. Better just to tough it out… Until he tried to escape from me in the Communion line. When I picked him up and carried him, he screamed “I’m TRAPPED! Help me!” And that was the last straw, we went outside instead of back into the pew.

Believe me, if my son is half this bad when he’s 13, I’m calling an exorcist. This, while humiliating and demoralizing, I can chalk up to him being three, can forgive, and had actually completely forgotten until I read the letter in the bulletin.

I just don’t understand the attitude of condescension I received. The letter is all about praising the small act of kindness of the usher, yet both the letter and the usher’s words sat themselves cavalierly in judgement of me as a mother and found me wanting. They couldn’t have known the amount of physical abuse I’d experienced in the last hour, or how my body ached from struggling with him, and my heart hurt from his attitude. Instead both the letter writer and the usher refused to understand. They implied that his misbehavior was imagined on my part. They didn’t offer me comfort. They didn’t remind me that this too shall pass. They didn’t offer friendly commiseration over their own children’s past bad behavior in church, which would have at least helped me feel less lonely.

All they gave me was judgement last Sunday… and yesterday a prolonging of the humiliation that I’d already forgotten.

It’s 10:21…

…and GeekBaby is sound asleep in my bed. Oh, sure, I could move him to his bed. But by sunrise he’ll be back in ours, if not long before. Sometimes the thump thump thump of feet in the hall wake me. Others, I wake up with a start an a yell. The rest of the time he ninjas in without Mike or I noticing… until hard little feet start kicking us in the kidneys and one of us retreats to the couch.

Yes, it’s wearing on us as much as it sounds.

I just don’t know what to do. If he wakes up in the middle of the night, that’s it, he ends up in our bed. Trying to put him back in his own bed results in uncalmable tears, similar to a night terror except that he calms right down if we left him sleep between us.

I keep hoping he’ll grow out of it, but there’s no sign of it happening anytime soon. And in the meantime we’re getting pretty tired over here.

Hiking With Toddlers – Day One

Herein I am compiling all of my observations about hiking with small children – toddler to preschooler range. It wasn’t easy to find much information about hiking with such small children, so I am recording my daily observations pour encourager les autres.

This is one of those complicated topics because so much depends on the individual toddler in question. My son is active and extremely strong, he wants to spend every moment outside, and he orients intently on his grown ups – whatever we are doing, we wants to do too. Hiking with us, even though he’s not quite three, is a natural extension for him. It may not be for others. I’m trying to keep my observations general, so please forgive my small sample size.

Today we hiked The Windows, taking the primitive loop from South Window back, had a quick break for lunch at the van, and then hiked up to Double Arch. GeekBaby did very well and hiked both trails by himself, probably two miles total.

Today’s observations:

1. When hiking with a toddler, you must carry a well stocked first aid kit. (Really, it’s always a good idea, but I digress.)

GeekBaby took two minor tumbles today. He missed a step on the improved trail at The Windows and tumbled down it. I’d just finished telling my dad he didn’t need to hold a hand for the steps, he’d been navigating them just fine all morning… And down he went, earning a couple bruises and a new respect for holding someone’s hand!

Later walking down to the Double Arch trailhead he tripped himself with the hiking stick he insisted on carrying and took a header into the gravel path. A kind passerby offered his first aid kit, but I had my own. I was sure he’d have torn his hands up, but he wasn’t even bleeding. Just one tiny scratch on the palm of his hand. I cleaned it out and on we went.

In addition to proper first aid materials, a small and highly covetable snack goes a long way towards calming distressed toddlers. Falls may not hurt them badly, but do scare them.

I was very glad I had the kit even if I didn’t need to break it out. Those two tumbles reinforced the intimidating knowledge that my child’s comfort and safety on the trail are in my hands… and that no amount of caution can prevent every tumble.

2. Outfitting a toddler is tricky business. Toddlers get a kick out of having gear just like the adults, but you don’t want to really spend much money on it and it can’t be too heavy. A pack (with plenty of growing room) and a 1L water reservoir will make them pretty happy. Other gear I packed for GeekBaby was a flashlight, whistle, rain jacket, diapers, and snacks. He carried it like a champ for the first hike. The second was short enough that we didn’t bother.

Generally, children can safely carry 20% of their body weight. My son’s pack weighed in at under 5 pounds with an upper limit of 7 pounds. But don’t push that weight limit too hard and be prepared to carry their pack if they get tired off it. I pack a couple carabiners to attach his pack to mine, just in case. It didn’t come to that today, but it probably will on longer hikes.

3. You have to teach them to walk with you instead of asking to be carried. This is best done before the hiking trip, and must be done on an individual adult basis. They have to learn that just because mommy and daddy won’t carry them, doesn’t mean that other relatives or family friends along for the hike will. Toddlers can smell a sucker a mile off.

Tomorrow we head to Delicate Arch. It’s a longer, more difficult hike than today’s adventures. I don’t consider it terribly challenging, it’s only a 3 mile round trip with ~500 feet of climb, but we’ll have to see how little legs handle it. I have high hopes he can do it, and if not, there are always Daddy’s shoulders.

Reprieve

GeekBaby is sleeping through the night.

The war between his pediatrician and myself over his sleeping habits has been long and bitter, but I claim the victory. I have always held that he will start sleeping through the night when he’s ready and before. She has been nagging me since he was just 4 months old that he should start sleeping through the night, that he should be sleeping through the night, that I need to let him let him scream it out, that he’ll just get more and more sleep deprived. I have been telling her that he’s impossible to put to sleep, he is a restless sleeper and wakes himself up, that the only way any of us survived to get this far is by letting him sleep in our bed, that he was sleeping in his toddler bed and usually came in with us towards the end of the night, that since he was weaned he has been particularly dependent on cuddling and I wasn’t going to positively banish him from sleeping with us until he was more independent.

After the last visit I had resolved to take a tougher tact on him staying in his bed, mostly because he keeps kicking the GeekHubs in the kidneys, but it needed to wait till the end of February when I was taking a couple weeks vacation and the increased lack of sleep would not impact my benchwork. (Also it meant I could nap.) When all of the sudden he just started sleeping through the night.

He has a couple different night time cries. There’s one that means he’s fallen out of bed, or has gotten up and wandered into a wall or something. There’s another cry that means he’s waking/has woken up and where did mommy and daddy go?? (If I act fast on this one, he goes right back to sleep, but it does require intervention.) And then there’s the “I’m just fussing” a little cry.

Cry it out is obviously useless on the first cry, he’s scared and maybe has a bumped head. And experience (since he was 4 months on!) has taught me cry it out is useless on the second type of cry – he just escalates. But the third cry, almost too anemic to be called a cry, if you ignore it, it goes away.

He fuss-cried a couple times the first night, once the second night, and ever since he’s slept through without a peep. He’s also insisted on going to bed earlier than usual, and is harder to wake up in the morning. I’m hopeful that this represents a mostly permanent change to his sleep.

But even if it isn’t, I am so, so very thankful.

[Update] Last night he resumed his sleepless behavior including sitting on my head at night. *sigh* At least I got a week out of it.