It's 3.22 pm and time to accept the inevitable.
One of the many many things that can ruin my day in an instant is a bad nap situation. If the baby or toddler of the house does not nap, the rest of the day is shot pretty much. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I try very hard. I put the kid down and then I leave for the expected amount of time the nap should last. If he seems particularly upset, I might go in one time, but since that makes things worse, I don't. I just pretend to ignore all the happy or sad noise coming out of that room. Granted 9 out of 10 times he is asleep within half an hour. But those other times....
I can hear him crying, then laughing, then jumping in his crib. I go about my business but a part of my brain is actively tracking the nap situation. I wash the dishes and check my email while the naplog goes:
"35 minutes since naptime started, subject is awake",
"125 minutes since naptime started, subject is still awake"
"the pillow, the sheet and possibly the mattress cover have been removed from the crib and strewn about the room... "
"toddler must be completely overtired and hyper right now"
"most likely toddler will be a monster for the rest of the day"
"your day is ruined"
"126 minutes since naptime started and subject is still not...your day is most definitely ruined"
The anxiety in me rises and I wonder why since I went about my business as IF he had been sleeping. There is no answer to this. There is just the firm knowledge of many many years and kids past that a missed nap will raise my stress level, but at the same time demand increased patience and endurance but most of all will ruin.my.day.
It takes a long time to figure out what motherhood really is. Few things can be known for sure, and those can take years to reveal themselves. One of those realizations for me was that I have a on-call-radar. When my kids are A. awake and B. in my presence my mind and body are in work mode. It doesn't matter if I'm just sitting around (which I hardly am, but for argument's sake...), my work-batteries are on and I will be tired at the end of it even though I will probably not be able to come up with one single thing that I "did". What DID I do all day? I was there and they were being kids. That is what we did. It's not that I'm always super busy, but I'm definitely "booked" to the point that I can't do anything else.
I have also become a sponge for my family's emotional (and sometimes physical state). If they're whiny, I'm feeling whiny. If they are overwhelmed and stressed out, I feel the same. Sometime when they complain of nausea, I feel nauseous. I suppose this is nature's way of ensuring optimal care for the young, but hey, what happened to me and myself? If Nikola didn't nap and I have to drag him now to ballet and back and a grocery trip in between I will feel his exhaustion and confusion over his emotional instability with all of my synapses every step of the way.
It's not the one missed nap. It's the lack of control over my day and my emotional state. It's up to them, it's all up to three minors who have yet to learn not to eat their boogers.
"She found that her time and her will were tightly fastened to her children."
Posted at 03:22 PM on March 02, 2010
Wow, what a post! It captures one of the most crucial aspects of motherhood so well that my words feel all inadequate to comment coherently and in the way this post "deserves."
Thanks for sharing, as always.
YES. I'm emailing this to my husband.
LOL at the Gulliver's Travels picture at the end.
And, who is the quote from?
Lindsey,
The image of gulliver had popped in to my mind several times in the past when thinking of my sitaution, just the way life with kids seems to literally tie you down. The quote on the pic... i don't know where it's from, i'm assuming from the book, but the one i wrote was just paraphrasing to illustrate my point. :)