Hey, dawn? I got a rosy finger for you RIGHT HERE.
July 6, 2004Day 1
Today, it happened. We knew this day would come. We’ve been spoiled for so long, and why should the Gods spare us, when so many other parents have been suffering since the day their children were born?
Today, the boy woke up at dawn.
Okay, if not dawn, then sometime around then. Close enough. Dawn-ish. Listen, asshole, it felt like dawn, and this is my blog, so I’m calling it dawn. Sorry, was I being irritable? Sorry. I woke up at DAWN.
Which, look, on its own, not the worst thing. We can enjoy this fine summer day, in all its splendor! We can leave the house before the cancer-giving rays of 10 am arrive! We will be like the early bird! Surely that early bird doesn’t start the day cursing up a storm! But the thing is. Here’s the thing. We, the husband and I, are not the morning-loving types. We do not greet the day with a song and a smile. We stay up late watching “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” then we read for a while, then we eventually manage to find our way to sleep, and by then it's usually insanely late. We roll out of bed when the child wakes, which until now has been (and I write this, knowing full well that half of the Finslippy-reading population will have no sympathy whatsoever for us from this moment on) somewhere around 9.
9, or even later. Sometimes, yes, sometimes as late as 10. This is why I love him. I thought we had an understanding. He sleeps late, and I will continue to provide affection.
I tried to reason with him. When I heard his little voice singing out to us from his crib, and I saw that the big hand on the clock was at some obscenely low number, I went to him. I shook his hand, and I said, “Good sir, it is still yet an early hour. Would you not enjoy a few more hours of rest? Your parents would be most obliged, and we would start the day in good humors, and also, you’re killing us with this waking up early shit. Please, I beg you. I need more sleep. Please. I’ll buy you a car. Anything. Anything. Please.” He probably couldn’t understand most of it through all of my sobbing, but anyway, by the time I got around to “please,” he had already clambered over the crib railing, monkeyed up my arms, and settled on top of my head, demanding Cheerios and Elmo, tout de suite.
But maybe this is an aberration. Maybe—probably!—some unparalleled set of events occurred in his room, like a chipmunk got caught in the air conditioner, which shorted out, causing some some sparks to fly into the room and hit that damned stuffed animal that when you hit it, it sings DEEDLE DEEDLE DOO over and over until you feel like madness is seconds away, DEEDLE DEEDLE DOO DOOP; maybe all that happened! Which I didn’t see any evidence of, and I really looked, but you never know! Yes. Yes, I’m sure this won’t happen again. Oh please.
Day 2
Damn.
Damn, damn, damn damn.
Is it so much to ask? Is it so cruel of me to request that he sleeps until a decent hour? Or to ignore him until he goes back to sleep? Not that he would. Not that he did. I laid there for minutes that seemed like hours, listening to him singing “Momm-eee,” over and over, in this singsong that I used to think was so cute and you know what I think of it now? I think he’s taunting me. It’s like, “Mommy, you chump, get up! Mommy, you love me too much to ignore me! The beast has risen from its slumber, and so must you, Mommy! MOMMY!” A couple of times he stopped, and I thought, oh, thank you, Lord, I knew I could count on you. Then the dog would bark—WHY DO WE HAVE A DOG? Who let him in here?—or the people upstairs would walk around—who told those people they could walk? Why didn’t we hobble them years ago?—and it would start up again, the taunting, the “Momm-eee, Momm-eee.”
I walked around Brooklyn yesterday like a zombie. A zombie with hair sticking up all at weird angles, like antennae. I forgot to fix the hair before leaving the house. This is not something I forget, normally. You don’t know this about me, but I am all about the presentation. It’s not like I’m applying eyeshadow every morning, but mascara, that’s another story. But yesterday it was all I could do to apply sunscreen to both of us. I greased us up with SPF 3,000, threw him into the stroller, and lurched toward the playground, forgetting his drink, his snack, and my sanity. I stayed in the shadows and hissed at anyone who came near us. At some point Henry asked for some Goldfish, and I may, I just may, have said, “Fuck Goldfish.”
No, I’m sure I didn’t! Ha, ha! Wouldn’t that have been terrible, had I said it! Which I did not!
Day 3
[EXPLETIVES DELETED BY TYPEPAD MANAGEMENT. We’re not running a cussing factory, here. Although those were extraordinary. What’s wrong with you, woman? You’d think no one else ever had to get up early.]
Day 4
Me so tired. Me not enjoying this. Me not like baby. Me want compose poem, but me not remember how.
Me sad. So sad, me.
Reader Comments (33)
I can't believe more mothers don't go on shooting sprees in grocery stores.
Oh, and haha! My kids never sleep past 6:30.
Remember: we don't need them healthy--we need them convenient.
8 or 9am has been our wake up time since Max was 1 or so.
Then, now that he's 30, we took him out of the crib and ALL HELL HAS BROKEN LOOSE and I'm not coping very well.
The worst, for my kids anyway, is that if I keep them up later...they're up earlier!!!!! We kept them up for the fireworks (11:30 they got to bed, bedtime is usually 8am) and JESUS MY GOD they were up at 6am!!!!!! SIX O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING!
Last night though I put them to bed at 7pm...a full hour earlier than usual and guess what time they woke up this morning?
9:30am! Yes! NINE THIRTY!!!! It's been over a week since that happened and it's wierd because I think I like them again.
Have a seat, you'll be here a while.
And you know what? I'm sort of having the opposite dilemma here (lower your weapons please) where my kids are sleeping in but I actually want them to get up. We're doing this pre-K summer session so we need to be eating breakfast at the time when they're still snoozing hard. Can't win.
I tried. I really, really did.
But honestly, zen is a load of crap.
You might want to check out getting drapes for the kid's room. For us at least, it was around Rachel's five month mark that the part of her brain that dealt with ambient light started to work. She'd get up literally with the sun.
I started hanging a dark blue sheet up over her window when she goes to bed at night and the next morning she woke at her regular not-dawn time.
Sorry to put advice in the space designated for clever wittiness. Hope this helps, though.
--FD