Two Conversations About Sleep

The Three Year Old

On the first Wednesday of spring, our car winds along the frozen backwaters of the Mississippi River, and I glance in the rear view mirror.  Eva's eyelids are heavy.  The kids spent the night before at Jamie's and the night before that Eva spent two hours after bedtime doing the I-need-a-drink-I-have-to-go-potty-will-you-buy-cookies-tomorrow torture that has become a regular nighttime routine.  She hasn't slept great for two nights in a row.  It is almost five o'clock and if she falls asleep on the way home the bedtime routine tonight will be even more torturous than usual.

"Eva," I say.  "Don't go to sleep.  Stay awake.  We're almost home."

"Don't worry about it, Mom," she says.  "Don't worry about me.  You worry about yourself!"

The Six Year Old

On the first Wednesday of spring, Sam and I lay under the rocket blanket on his bed with one of the new books he brought home from school, one of the books that I snuck in to the Scholastic book order after he picked out Lego early readers and Star Wars phonics sets.  National Geographic First Big Book of Why.  He always tells me that he is smart because he likes science, and he and I enjoy reading science books after Eva's in bed.  I tell him he can pick out 2 more questions to read and then it's lights out.  We read an explanation of why you need to sleep at night, how the body needs to rest to take care of itself, to keep your mind from getting confused or angry or sad.  The second question he picks is about why we have dreams and nightmares.  The book explains that everything we see and touch and smell and hear during the day is tumbled around and when we sleep the brain makes mashed up movies of all these things.

"That doesn't make sense!" he says. 

"What doesn't?"

"They said your brains needs to rest at night but then they said dreams are when your brain is playing at night.  Which is it?"

"Good question, Sam.  That's a really good question."

Her Little Buddy

One of Eva's favorite toys is the Hex Bug maze and the little battery powered bugs that seem so real that you forget they're not actually alive.  Her favorite is the red glow-in-the-dark bug which she calls Buddy.  She sits on the floor and opens and closes the orange gates, trapping him and then setting him free over and over again.

"You want to go in there, Buddy?"

"You can't go in there, Buddy."

"How about over here, Buddy?"

Jamborees

"It is more important to keep your eye on the ball than it is to try to get a goal," Sam said after I asked how he knew so much, how he had gotten so good so fast. 

We were out in the back yard kicking the ball around while Eva napped.  He had just scored his third goal by kicking the ball past me and in to the evergreen that sits between our house and the street.  I had yet to get the ball away from him long enough to kick it down the slope of our yard and into the tree that would allow me to score.

That was two weeks ago, a few days after his first Football Jamboree in La Crosse in which Kate and Eric and I cheered from the sidelines and took pictures while Kelly entertained Eva and snuggled with Eomji.  During the first Jamboree they had an older gentleman as a ref and he took the entire thing very seriously, encouraged the coaches to come out on the field and instruct the kids about the game, carefully explained the coin toss to the team captains (one of them Sam), and made sure the rules were followed.  During the second jamboree 2 weeks later, the high school student ref didn't seem all that interested in being there and he insisted we play on the smaller field and we all groaned about having to move to the cold shade, but even with the new 4 on 4 formation and the cold weather and one boy out with a broken arm, the second jamboree was a wild success.  Kate even got them all to pose for a team photo before we grabbed brats from the concession stand and loaded our gear back in the Mazda and headed home wishing we could do it every week.

Sam had two more nights of practice in which they mostly played games and the parents jogged in place to stay warm, but even though the sun is getting low in the sky by dinner time and the temperatures make gloves imperative, Sam still wants to be out there every day. 

"Why can't we play soccer in the winter?" he asks.  "We could shovel a circle in the snow and still play," he insists.  "Or maybe there's someplace we could play indoors in the winter.  What about our basement?"

Not a bad idea.

The Meaning of the D Word

TT has said we should sneak away, go get some grown-up time.  She knows how The Man and I have avoided using the D word, and she teases us about going on a date-non-date.  Sam has overheard me talk about how I wasn't going to date until Eva was four years old, but this is perhaps the first time the word has come up in front of him in the context of The Man and me.  Sam snickers just as The Man sets a second plate of hamburgers down on the table between Eva and TT.

"You don't even know what dating is," I say as I ruffle Sam's mop of thick blond hair.  "Do you even know what a date is?"

I smile and push his dinner plate back from the edge of the table and I briefly make eye contact with The Man who smiles and winks.

"Yah," Sam says. "It's when you go out for some love and some food."

Garden Gnomes Building Nature

We put in the tomatoes and peppers weeks ago (though they've hardly grown because of the cool temps), but my crazy weekend schedule and the unusually cool, wet weather have kept us from finishing up the garden planting.  But finally my Saturday schedule and the weather cooperated, and we spent the morning checking out our perennials and getting the beans and carrots in the soil.  Sam was a great garden helper, carefully drawing a planting line with a popsicle stick and dropping the beans in one at a time before covering them with soil. 

"We're building nature," he said.  "We had to break down the nature when we stirred the dirt and cut up the weeds, and now we're building new nature."

Remembering Two

She has finally allowed me to place her in the car seat, and after a quick scuffle about who would snap together which of the three buckles, she pushes her hair back from her forehead and sticks her chin up with self satisfaction.  She wins a lot of battles.  She says she wants some crackers, so as I run back in the house to get my cell phone I grab a roll of Ritz and tear it open.  I reach backwards from the front seat to hand her two crackers and she doesn't take them, ignores me.

"Eva, take the crackers," I say. 

Silence.  I cannot see her because she is behind me and my shoulder hurts so I pull my arm forward and start the car.  I am backing out of the driveway when she starts screaming.

"I want crackers! I want crackers!"

The garage door slowly closes and I unwind the twisty tie and pull out two crackers and reach back behind me again.  She slaps at my hand.

"No!  I don't want them!"

"I thought you wanted them.,  Here.  Take them.  You like them."  I wave them and wait.  She doesn't take them and I place them on the console beside me and pull out onto the road.

"Crackers!  Crackers.  I want crackers!"  she yells over and over again as we move along the county road and up to the main highway two miles away.

I reach over and hand them to her and she takes them and quiets.

Last night in the 45 minutes after we arrived home Eva fought the car seat and locked Sam and I in the garage and threw her boots across the kitchen and slapped the milk because it was in the wrong cup and locked herself in the bathroom long enough to pile all her clothes on the floor and pee on them.  I don't remember Sam being this difficult at two.

In the car I turn the rear view mirror to make sure Sam's seat belt is pulled across his chest and properly latched under the arm of his booster seat.

"See how good I'm being?" Sam says from the other side of the car.  "Can I pick the song because I'm being so good?  I want number 3."

And as soon as the music starts and Willie Nelson and Kid Rock belt out a story about the last stand in open country Eva starts screaming that No she does not like this song!  She does not want this song!

I sigh and turn it up.

Technology at Two

 

What's funnier... that Eva calls the Etch-a-sketch her I-pad or that she hands me a dried up marker and says it's not working and needs batteries?

As challenging as age 2 can be with all the boundary testing and insistence on doing it their way and then doing it your way and then doing it their way again (just ask me about the blanket battle routine at bedtime every night), my rapidly growing daughter is a delight who makes me laugh every day.  Last night when Sam won the coin toss to pick the movie to watch and he didn't pick Finding Nemo, my sweet, cuddly little girl burst into tears and pointed at her brother and screamed "NO!  NO!  We're not watching that movie!  I don't want that movie!  No!"  And I had to duck behind a wall so she wouldn't see that I was laughing just as hard as Sammy was.

Halloween in the St. Mary's Parking Lot

The cold, fall rain comes down fast as we pull forward in the St. Mary's parking lot, and Sam points to the small white statue on the west side of the building.

"There's Jesus's mom," he says. 

"Yep,"  I say.  "That's Mary."

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I don’t fret about a whole lot when it comes to parenting.  I generally feel comfortable with decisions I make and mostly have an attitude that they will turn out okay no matter what.  But some of my closer friends will tell you that there are two things I do worry over: what to teach my children about God, and what is the best schooling solution for our family. 

"Jesus is everywhere," Sam says, and his 4-and-a-half-year-old friend E who sits in the booster seat beside him agrees.

I won’t lie.  Sam goes to a Catholic pre-school not because I believe anything they teach him about Jesus and God but because it’s the most convenient pre-school for my work situation.  I don’t know what I believe about Jesus and God, but I also know that Sam is learning to be a good and loving person from good and loving people.  And the school is just a few blocks from my office.

"Jesus is in your heart.  He's everywhere.  Even in your skeleton," Sam says.

"He's not in a skeleton," E says.  "Skeletons aren't real."

"Yes they are.  They're your bones.  Your bones are real."

"But skeletons are not real."

"Yes they are," Sam insists.  "Everyone has a skeleton inside them.  Your brain tells them what to do.  When you want to move your hand, your brain sends a message to your bones and your hand moves.  And when you walk your brain sends a message to your foot to walk.  Skeletons are real."

And there you have it.  Sam sums up science and religion and Halloween in the St. Mary's parking lot.  This mama has nothing to worry about.

(This post has been modified since I originally posted it, and it's part of my series of blog posts for thenextfamily.com.)

Just Like That

Before she was born I often wondered how it would be possible that I would love another child as much I loved my first born, how another child could take over my heart in that same way.  But as soon as I saw her, all screaming red mad, nearly 10 pounds of feisty girl opinion, I adored Eva.  And when she snuggled up to my chest and her wet, warm little head melted against my skin I knew it was possible to love more than one child with all my heart.

Last weekend I was in the kitchen cleaning (don’t so many of my blog posts start this way?) and I heard water running in the bathroom. I turned the corner to see Eva sitting on the toilet, her little butt pressed onto the potty seat and her chubby feet resting on the stool.  She had seen Sammy sit like this dozens of times, and while I was cleaning she had piled her black stretch pants and her dry diaper on the rug and placed the stool and the potty seat and crawled up to go potty all by herself.

When I told Jamie she suggested big girl underwear might be a good birthday present, and here we are two years after, as Sam says, “the doctor cut Eva out of your belly.”  Two years.  Just like that. 

We walked in to Gunderson Lutheran today to visit the pediatrician for her two-year well visit and Eva strutted through the doors and announced “I want see birdies.”  How she remembered the little aviaries set up throughout the clinic I do not know, but my highly verbal, independent, opinionated two-year-old lights up my life every single day. 

“I do it,” she says when I try to buckle her car seat.

“I want other shoes,” she says when I try to put on her blue shoes and she wants the black shoes.

“I no like ‘cado,” she says when I place dinner in front of her.  “I like ‘matoes.  I like ‘matoes, no cut.”

“Sammy no like bananas,” she says when I hand her breakfast in the morning.  “I like bananas.  Sammy no like bananas.”

“Kids no have it,” she says when she gets out of the car at Jamie’s in the morning carrying an apple slice or a Ritz cracker.

“Look mom,” she says as she stands on the arm of the couch and imitates her brother.  “I no careful.  Look mom.  I no careful.”

“I too little,” she laughs as she gets up from a face-plant into the carpeting because she sometimes thinks she can do everything her big brother does and living room gymnastics are part of his daily routine.

Every day with Eva brings new surprises that make me laugh, and when she and I read a book and rock together for a quick ten minutes alone before bedtime every night I sometimes want to slow it all down, pay more attention, memorize her face and her laugh and her adorable little voice before everything changes.

Two years.  Just like that.

Girls Can Drive Dumptrucks and Boys Can Dance

Another installment for The Next Family:

“I wish our family had two moms,” Sam says, and I am caught by surprise.  I am loading the dishes into the dishwasher while Sam puts the head on his new Lego alien minifigure and Eva pulls at my pantsleg begging for her bedtime cup of milk.

“Why is that?” I ask.  Our family has one parent.  One mom.  And it’s never going to have two moms.

“Because moms are great, and if there were two moms one could play with me while the other mom puts Eva to bed.”

Since he came home from the hospital I’ve been talking to Sam about how all families are different.  We have books that talk about big families and small families, families that adopt, families with two moms or two dads, families with just one parent.  We have books that explain IVF and how a child can come in to the world with just a mom. 

“That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” I say, both pleased and curious as to why he didn’t say he wishes our family had a dad.

We know lots of different kinds of families.  Families with adopted kids.  Families with foster kids.  Families with moms and dads.  Families with just one mom.  But I don’t know that Sam has ever been exposed to a family with two moms, and I wonder where this came from.  Has he already learned the wrong message that moms do all the kid stuff and take care of everything or is he just wishing there were two mommies because he wants two of ME?

I lift Eva on to my hip and drop silverware into the dishwasher before handing her a sippy cup, but these thoughts stay with me as I walk into the nursery and change Eva’s diaper.  Eva holds up the Cinderella and Snow White dolls that came with her Little People princess castle from Grandma.  Earlier in the day Cinderella drove a dumptruck while Snow White road in the bucket, and Snow White answered the door when the fix-it guy (that actually came with the dumptruck) came to fix the broken balcony on the castle and ended up dancing in front of the princess mirror.  And before I put Eva into her crib Snow White and Cinderella will be placed side by side in the little pink plastic bed on the top floor of the castle and Eva will tell me “Shhhhh.  They sleeping.”

Eva is just on the verge of learning boy versus girl, and now that he’s in pre-school Sam explains to me about girl things and boy things, but I hope that both of my children will always believe that girls can drive dumptrucks and boys can dance and the world is made up of all kinds of families including families with two moms.

You can see all my previous blog posts for TNF here.

For information on Minnesotans United for All Families and the upcoming marriage amendment vote in Minnesota click here.