Labor Day has come and gone. And all across the land parents are putting away the summer whites, dropping a week’s pay at Staples for school supplies and then secretly doing the happy dance. My kids are still too young for elementary school. But parents, I feel you.
Don’t get me wrong, we had a lovely summer– long afternoons at the playground, cooling off at the beach and the spray park, weekly pilgrimages to the local farmer’s market, and trips to see family and friends. So why am I okay with watching those days slip away? Essentially it boils down to this: I am old and infirm and summer requires a LOT of extra energy.
I think Emma is being a little bit passive aggressive. Yes, I realize she is just a baby. And, yes, I am aware that she only knows four words. Well, four words in English anyway. (I am not qualified to comment on how many words she knows in Urdu or Mandarin Chinese.) That doesn’t mean she can’t communicate. Case in point: last week I had my first ever conversation with her; the transcript is below.
Mother confession: my children are not bathed on a daily basis. Not even close. Don’t ask how often I bathe them. Because I will lie. Honestly, I have never understood parents who say that they give their children a bath each night as part of a “winding down before bed” routine. Really? So, do your children find screaming at the top of their lungs, “I WILL NOT TAKE A BATH!” relaxing? Mmm. Interesting. Then our children must be different.
My husband, Dan, and I fear different things. I worry about global warming and whether each of our children is getting enough attention. Dan worries about the apocalypse and extraterrestrial invasion. (I read him the last line and he said, “Those aren’t things I fear, they’re things I’m preparing for.”) I worry that our children might be teased or bullied by other kids. Dan worries that our kids won’t be multilingual, karate black belts, who can program in Java with their left hand while playing the piano with their right hand. Anyway, between the two of us, we have most of our bases covered.
When Jacob turned three (about a year ago), I started to realize just how little I know. I don’t mean how little I know about parenting. I mean how little I know about anything. Like any self-respecting three-year old, Jacob started asking questions. Incessantly.
“Mommy, how do they make fish food?”
“Do worms have teeth?”
“Does the lady that gets shot out of the cannon feel scared?”
“Why did my goldfish jump out of his bowl?”
“Why don’t some people think pink is a lovely color?”
A few days ago, after explaining to Jacob that we sometimes have to pull the car over when ambulances, fire trucks and police cars are behind us, he asked breathlessly: “Does the frozen lemonade truck get to go first too??”
Sleep. It somehow comes to define so much of the first year with a baby. Will the baby sleep? Will I sleep? Why won’t the baby ever sleep? Will I ever sleep again? Am I currently awake or just having a really annoying dream?
Jacob was (and sometimes still is) a horrible sleeper. As a baby, he needed an incredible amount of walking, bouncing, rocking, and soothing before we could even attempt to gingerly lay him down in his crib. And then the real fun began– trying to navigate the minefield of creaky boards in our nearly 100 year old house on the way out of his room. (Ah, memories.) Thing was, even if we made it out safely, it was virtually assured that Jacob would wake up again two hours later. And shriek at the top of his lungs. (“WHAT KIND OF MISERABLE PARENTS WOULD LEAVE ME HERE IN THIS WOODEN CAGE- with an adorable animal mobile- ALONE!?!”) The SUPER fun part of it all was that whatever trick we used to get him to sleep one week would inevitably expire and we would have to start from scratch figuring it out again the next week.
When my son, Jacob, was born four years ago, I started keeping a journal. I carefully chronicled the metamorphosis that our family went through as Jacob grew and my husband and I evolved into our new role as parents. Maybe ‘evolved’ isn’t quite the right word. Before we had Jacob, Dan and I were calm, relatively thoughtful, acceptably hygienic people. Within a few months of starting our parenting gig, we became the sort of people who would look at a stain on our clothing as we ran, haggard, out the front door and wonder whether it was one of our child’s bodily fluids. After about a year, my journal entries trailed off. Fast forward a few more years to the birth of our daughter, Emma. When Emma was born, I had hoped to start writing again. But didn’t. I blinked a few times (did a lot of laundry) and now she is one year old. So, I am starting a blog. I may not be able to fix the Middle East, cool our warming planet or find the antidote to having that nauseatingly saccharine Barney song stuck in your head. (Parents, you know what I’m talking about. You find yourself singing it sometimes. And a little part of you dies.) If I can’t leave the world a better place for my children, at least I can leave them a (slightly mortifying?) record of their first several trips around the sun.
Fumbling Toward Naptime 