Tag Archives: parenting

To Mom, from your boys

This blog is normally written from the father’s point of view, but today it’s all about mothers. Specifically, it is about a mother who has to manage three boys, aged 6 weeks, 3 years, and 40-something, on a daily basis.

In retrospect, we try to make all of our sins seem comical, but they are not always comedy to the one who has to endure them day after day. We don’t mean to kick all of your rugs out of place with our scuffling feet. We don’t mean to roughhouse so disruptively when you’re trying to relax for a minute. We don’t mean any of the hardships we put you through. It’s just that we’re boys; we are doomed to suffer spells of inconsideration and ingratitude. We are not the most emotionally focused breed.

We try to make it up to you in little ways. We try to give you the things you need to be happy (though we sometimes miss noticing what some of those things are). Since you are a girl, we don’t always understand everything you need, but we try to meet the needs we understand.

Our ways are boy ways, so they may not always make sense to you. Still, we try hard, in our own special way, to let you know how we feel about you. And anyone versed in boy ways will hear us very clearly when we do the little things we do to quietly tell the world how much we love and need you.

Happy Mother’s Day. We love you dearly.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers of the world. And to every mother who lives in a house full of boys, a special wish: May God have mercy on you.

Houston, we have splashdown

I had my first extended stint as Mr. Mom since the new baby came, and it didn’t start out so well. The baby didn’t want to sleep all day, which isn’t really a crisis, and is understandable, considering that I had nothing more soothing than a bottle to put into his mouth. But it would have been nice if he could have taken a short nap just to let me get organized before setting upon me with his verbal assault.

A crying toddler, on the other hand, is always a crisis – to the toddler anyway. And it does distract from Daddy’s ability to soothe a crying baby, which he’s not really very good at in the first place.

The three-year-old announced that he had to go potty. No problem. He’s adept at climbing onto the toilet and getting the party started all by himself. He wouldn’t need any help for a few minutes. Meanwhile, Daddy could keep arguing with the baby.

After a little while, I went into the bathroom to check on the boy. His pants were down, but he wasn’t sitting on the potty. He was standing with his shirt hiked up behind him, using two hands to buff his lower back with a hand towel. It looked like he had a bad itch.

“What’s going on?” I asked, not even in that accusing tone I most often use.

He burst into tears. Now, toddlers are pretty clever folks, but two things they have never effectively learned to do at the same time are cry and answer a lot of pointless questions. The boy made no attempt at words. He focused all his attention upon his wailing. The baby heard his song and picked up the harmony.

“I can’t have two crying kids,” I told him, a little in that annoyed father tone I most often use. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

For a second, he tried to say something, but the crying would not relent.

“Stop crying and tell me what’s wrong,” I insisted, comfortingly, instead of in the impatient tone I most often use.

“My shirt’s wet,” he choked out between sobs.

“How’d your shirt get wet?” I asked. You can probably imagine all the tonal cues from here.

“I don’t know.”

When my son says, “I don’t know,” it means one of the following, in order of frequency:

a.) “I think the truth might get me into trouble, so I’m pleading the fifth.”

b.) “I’m really embarrassed and I’d rather not talk about it.”

c.) “I don’t know.” This last example is a rare usage, usually reserved for questions of an academic nature (e.g. “What number comes after 19?”).

I may not be the world’s most perceptive parent, but I know there are only two sources of water in our downstairs bathroom, and I didn’t hear the sink running. Further investigation revealed that his toddler potty seat was over in the corner, where it could do nothing toward keeping him high and dry.

“Did you fall in?” I asked.

Footstool, toddler seat, books to read – of all the amenities, only the toddler seat is indispensable. Alas . . .

“Maybe.”

“Okay. Take off your shirt. I’ll get you a new one.”

I got him cleaned up and settled back into the world. We spoke no more of the incident. I didn’t even laugh, and I want credit for that. Somebody falls into the toilet and a guy with four brothers doesn’t even laugh. That’s love, pure and simple.

I think the baby might have laughed though. He stopped crying for minute, which is as good as a laugh to me. But I guess he has to laugh at this kind of stuff. It’s his brother.

Give up your lost cause, Daddy

Pickett’s Charge was the crescendo of Gettysburg, the high water mark of the Confederacy. Thousands of men charged toward a strongly defended line. They reached that line and punctured it. At that moment, they must have felt the euphoria of hard-fought victory.

Then, their charge ran out of steam. They were thrown back, battered and bruised. It was the beginning of the end for them.

Why do I mention Pickett’s Charge in a parenting blog?

Because at 1 a.m. this morning, as I was struggling to get the baby to sleep, I thought about all the men in history who fought hard and thought they had won, only to be cast backward into defeat. It isn’t that I wish Pickett’s Charge had succeeded; I’m very satisfied that it failed. Yet, as this fidgety baby turned my hard-won victory to defeat, I felt the weary pain of having the tables turn against me at the crucial moment.

The High Water Mark at Gettysburg. The monument to Daddy’s High Water Mark is the bruise he got while walking, half asleep, into the bathroom door frame on his way to the shower in the morning. (Photo: National Park Service)

At 11:30 p.m. the baby started crying. I took him downstairs and poured him three fingers of milk. He finished about two fingers worth before he waved off the bottle with his spastic little hands.

For an hour, I rocked him, swayed with him, and bounced him on my knee. He didn’t cry, but he didn’t close his eyes either. He just sat there looking cute, and awake. Occasionally, he would punk me by fitting a tall yawn in between his moments of contemplative staring at the ceiling.

Finally, his eyes got droopy. I took him upstairs and put him into his cradle. This perked him right up again. To keep things moving in the right direction, I gave him my pinky finger to suckle. He settled down.

For long, uncomfortable minutes, I hunched over him, rocking his cradle and feeding him my finger. It was working. As he drifted further into sleep, I eased my finger loose from his gums. In another instant, I would be free. Victory and a soft pillow would be mine!

Then the tables turned. We were doomed by the Moro Reflex.

The Moro Reflex is that instinct that makes babies fling their arms up over their heads at moments critical to their parents’ escapes. I have noticed two variations of the Moro Reflex. The Little Moro Reflex is the one where the baby throws his arms up in one fluid motion. I call this the Praise the Lord Reflex. The baby comes out of R.E.M. long enough to ask his dreams, “Can I get a witness?” then slips right back into deep slumber.

The Big Moro Reflex is the one where the baby violently jerks himself awake throwing his arms up and casting them all about for some vine or lemur tail to catch hold of. His eyes jolt open, and in them you can hear him think, “Holy shit, I’m falling out of the monkey tree!” The baby is now irrevocably awake.

At 1 a.m. this morning, my baby boy was stricken with the Big Moro Reflex. It was my high water mark.

An action shot of the Moro Reflex. This is only a dramatization; no parents were exhausted during the taking of this picture.

I jammed my pinky back into his mouth, but it was too late. My victory was slipping away from me, and I knew it. Everything was trending in the wrong direction, right up to the point when the boy signaled my defeat with his battle cry.

This cry woke my wife. She saw that I was a shell of the proud soldier I had once been. I was summarily relieved of duty. Maybe I had earned a rest, but I had earned no victory. Just like the survivors of Pickett’s Charge.

 

Congratulations, it’s an abstinence zealot!

Monday morning, 3 a. m.

Daddy is gently awakened by Mommy whispering into his ear. It sounds like she is saying, “I’m welding a metal Titanic.”

Daddy tries to shake off his sleep. “Huh?” he whispers.

“I’m feeling a little romantic,” Mommy repeats.

Daddy is tired. He has to go to work in the morning and he always has trouble getting to sleep on Sunday nights. Yet, with the birth of the baby, and Mommy’s long recovery afterward, it’s been a little lonely on his side of the bed. He does some sleepy calculations and determines that he should take his romance when he can get it. He pulls Mommy close and puts his lips softly on the nape of her neck.

Mommy yawns. Daddy was hoping for a sound more similar to a welcoming coo, but it’s 3 a. m., so he assumes that there was some sort of encouraging noise hidden beneath the yawn. Mommy is tired too. For the last four weeks, she’s had to convert herself into a buffet table every two or three hours. She has to get up at least as early as Daddy if she hopes to get anything accomplished  before the boys wake up.

Their spooning feels so nice. It is so comfortable that there is a good chance they will both simply fall back to sleep. Daddy means to kiss Mommy’s neck, but his lips feel settled and content on the spot where they first landed.

This is such an awkward time, Daddy thinks. If only it were . . . he runs all the other times of the day through his head until he realizes that this awkward hour is the only possible time. The three-year-old hasn’t taken a daytime nap in a year and a half. The infant’s loud demands eat away at both ends of nighttime. It’s now or never.

Since never seems like an even longer time than it’s already been, Daddy redoubles his focus. He nudges his sloth lips into activity. Mommy responds. She takes Daddy’s hand and carefully guides it to. . .

“Ehnt!” a sleepy little voice calls from the cradle.

Mommy and Daddy freeze. Maybe if they are very still and quiet, he’ll drift back to sleep.

A quiet moment passes. Hope builds. Mommy and Daddy resume their soft movements.

“Ehnt! Ehnt!”

Again, they freeze. Mommy silently rolls over and stares into the dark cradle. Daddy keeps what fleeting contact with Mommy he can.

Another quiet moment passes. Mommy rolls back to Daddy. They resume, but the belief has gone out of their caresses. Their attentions are in their perked ears. Silence. Maybe it was a false alarm after all. They begin to relax and think about each other again.

“Erwhaaaaa! Erwhaaaaa! Erwhaaaaa!”

Mommy sits up. “I’ll feed him a little bit,” she says. “Maybe he’ll go right back to sleep.”

“Okay,” Daddy replies, trying hard to sound like he buys into the fantasy.

Mommy gets the baby and goes to sit with him in the rocking chair. Daddy stays in the big, lonesome bed.

Daddy opens his eyes. The sun is up. The clock says it’s 7. Time to get up for work.

The baby is sleeping soundly in the cradle. Mommy is zonked out in the rocking chair.

Daddy gets up and stumbles over to Mommy. He kisses her on the forehead. “Morning, sunshine.”

Mommy opens her eyes and immediately moves them until they rest upon the baby. “Morning.”

“Good news!” Daddy tells her. “Our birth control worked again.”

“It’s very simple, my dear. How can we be expected to find time to procreate when you insist upon having all these children?”

There are many forms of birth control; some may be more effective than children are, but none are more zealous in their cause. Children can sense impending intimacy and their mission is to put the nix on it. There seems to be a subconscious Darwinism in their minds that tells them that intimacy equals more siblings. More siblings means more sharing. Sharing limits a young person’s ability to hoard all the ice cream, cupcakes, and other resources necessary to live a childhood safely above the level of hardscrabble existence. Hence, intimacy must be eliminated from the household.

“It seems like we’ve been waiting forever for the children to go to sleep.”*

Statistic show that one of every three clips on America’s Funniest Home Videos results in some hapless father being thumped in the nuts with a blunt object by one of his children. These are not accidents. These are calculated assaults on human reproduction by children who have nearby relatives to babysit them on alternating Saturday nights. This creates a dangerous gap in their control over their parents’ activities; therefore they have resorted to Plan B. Plan B is not subtle, but these are desperate times.

“Oh no! Don’t ask me for another child. I like fooling around too much for that.”

With only one child, it wasn’t so bad. He was outnumbered, and he couldn’t stay awake all the time.  Now, we’ve gone and made things more difficult by giving him a reinforcement. Between the two of them, they do a pretty thorough job of guarding both the day and the night. Together, those brothers are worthy adversaries.

I don’t know if we will have more children. I don’t know if we will decide to have more, and if we do, I’m not sure we will get past the sentries.

*Artist: George Hand Wright