Today was a good reminder of why being a parent can be a roller-coaster. Although there are ups and downs, the final feeling is that of exhilaration. Well, for me it is. For some it might just be the sudden need to vomit.
The Downs
I woke up to a loud frustrated sigh. This was at 10:30 already, so some quick math tells me that the monkey has been up for 2.5 to 3.5 hours. In other words, naptime. The frustrated sigh came not from Cole but from his mother. I rolled over to see her getting up out of bed then nursing/bouncing him. Nobody lets out such a loaded sigh right at the beginning of a frustrated period, my brilliant powers of deduction told me. It follows, therefore, that she had been at it for a while. I half-heartedly offered to take over, praying that she wouldn’t take me up on my offer and that I could just sleep some more.
She did NOT take me up on my offer, but unfortunately the guilt wouldn’t let me sleep. I know what it’s like to be that frustrated by the monkey’s unwillingness to nap like a sane tired baby would, and I couldn’t in good conscience just leave my wife to that fate. After a few minutes I rolled out of bed, still nude (sorry for the visual) and offered to take the baby.
“Maybe you want some clothes.”
“Good idea,” my pasty mouth says while I squint at her through one eye.
After the handoff, she asks if it’s OK to leave him with me. He’s been fed, he’s good and tired, and it’s just that last bit of the battle that has to be fought. She already has plans to run with a friend, and I know that running means a lot to her and her happiness, so I give her the blessing and dig in for the battle.
I regret to inform you that I lost.
For 30 minutes I do my normal routine… singing jazz standards in the style of Ella Fitzgerald (my favourites: “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm”, “Our Love is Here To Stay,” “Lady Is a Tramp”), a handful of lullabies, and an approximation of Elvis’s “Can’t Help Falling In Love” (is that the title?). Then I start making up new lyrics to other songs… and then making up new songs entirely. At one point I resorted to just talking in a low soothing voice about various items in the room. “Oh, that’s a nice pair of socks on the floor. They’re getting worn out, but they were my favourites. Do you think if I stretch a sock around both of your legs you’ll stop trying to kick me in the face?” (all soothing, remember…).
At around that time he was already getting hungry/snacky again. Fine.
The #$*&! Medela bottles take forever to warm up because the plastic they use is such a good insulator. I had to run new hot water 3 times, all to warm up a half-bottle of milk that I suspected Alex would be mad at me for feeding him in the first place.
At around the 45 min mark, the bottle is finally warm, we find the exercise ball, do some bouncing, and he feeds. His eyes at this point are little red circles. His lids close. “Hooray!” I think to myself. But no, I was wrong. They’re not closed. I can see weeeeeee little reflections through thin little slits, telling me that he’s still got his eyes opened a millimetre. Which is just enough to keep himself awake as he drains the rest of the bottle, gets annoyed when there’s no more, and wakes himself all the way up again.
He’s starting to struggle a lot now, no matter which way I hold him. Usually he’ll settle for one of a few different ways of holding him, but at this point none of them were working. I was getting frustrated, which tells me it’s time to have a bit of a break. Put him safely in bed, close the door, and hope that for once in his life “cry it out” will work. But something was telling me that I had chosen the wrong time (he was way too overtired for this kind of thing), and I also wasn’t mentally prepared for it (it was incidental, not a planned strategy). So, I decided against it after all. 5 minutes later, with a bit of patience and composure regained, I went back in.
He calmed down a bit, so I lay down near him to just watch him, rub his back, etc. He started practicing crawling and doing pushups, a difficult endeavour when your entire body is shutting down from tiredness. Yet, he didn’t go under. You can see it in his every movement that he’s beyond exhaustion, but he doesn’t go under.
Picked him up, rocked him for a while longer, and at this point he’s starting to cry. Loudly. It’s pretty heart-breaking, but there’s nothing much I can do.
I let him try to get as comfortable as he can be, rocking and shushing, until at last the front door opens, Alex comes upstairs, and relieves me of duty. I could feel that if I had been alone for even half a minute longer, I would have been crying along with Cole.
5 minutes of nursing and bouncing by mom, and he was finally out. Thankfully he took a good 1.5-hr nap.
The Ups
Once he had some rest he was of course more fun to be around. But I was so exhausted and still recovering emotionally that I didn’t feel like getting up to too much today. By mid-afternoon we decided to take a family excursion to the Conroy Pit for a dogwalk. “The dogs need attention, too,” said my wife, and I couldn’t agree more.
Uneventful walk, though I was surprised that he didn’t nap. He was due. Wait, did I just say that? “I was surprised that he didn’t nap”??? Weird, but true. I was.
He eventually had another nap, I made some Valentimes(sic) supper (a new recipe for herb-crusted oven-roasted lamb chops), and we watched some Olympics.
The good parts were sprinkled throughout the early evening. Mostly, it’s just that he was starting to babble with a few new syllables, which is pretty exciting since he tends to just say “mem mem mem” all the time (Aunt Na will be amused to know that he was saying “Gey gey gey”–a young child’s approximation of ‘Greg’ instead of “Da da da”). Plus he was smiley. Plus, he had a few true crawling moments.
And the laughter!
It’s not hard to make that little guy laugh. A few well-placed tickles, a few well-timed zerberts, and he’s laughing. And it’s not just for his parents, either– he’ll laugh for anyone. But be that as it may, when he starts letting loose with GENUINE belly-laughs, with his huge cutie-cute dimples, it’s just the most awesome thing.
Once he was in bed, I just looked at Alex and said, “It’s pretty great being a parent, eh?” Which of course prompted a discussion relating to the morning’s horrors as well. We both tend to agree that no matter how bad certain parts of the day are, on balance each and every day ends up being a pretty cool day as a parent. The talking, the crawling, and the laughter all more than made up for the frustration and aggravation of the morning.
Tomorrow we will eat steel-cut oats with apple… go swimming at a public pool… and maybe have an afternoon nap together. That’s if the day is full of only ups. Otherwise, it’ll be business as usual… a bit of down mixed in with the ultimate up.
