Sleeping Around

Wait! It’s not what you think! I haven’t decided to suddenly turn this mama blog into Fifty One Shades of Gray.

So... last night, at two in the morning, poor C stormed out of our bedroom.

You see, Emmy had kicked him (in her sleep) for like the 84^th time. He couldn’t take any more beatings.

I felt horrible for him, of course. It’s no fun to be kicked in the stomach and back repeatedly, when all you want to do is rest and maybe dream a little.

After he left the room to go seek refuge in our tiny guest room, I started thinking about beds (it was two a.m. and my head was sleepy, so I wasn’t going to start thinking about nuclear physics).

I started thinking about all the beds I’ve slept in (again, not in THAT way). Then I started counting the number of places I’ve called home since I was born. 

There were some real winners among the bunch. Like the studio basement apartment I lived in when I got my first job after graduating from college. The place was the size of my thumbnail, reeked of auto exhaust fumes (the one tiny window in the apartment was in direct line with the complex’s driveway), and was directly across the hall from the laundry room, which meant that the “thunka thunka” of the dryer was the theme song of my existence.

There was the apartment out in LA that I shared with a spider enthusiast who enjoyed scaring me with his black widows and tarantulas. He also loved playing with fire (literally). And also dressed in women’s lingerie constantly  when he was stupid drunk. I never slept very peacefully in that apartment.

And there was the haunted house in Providence, Rhode Island. I’m not a believer in ghosts, or a watcher of Crossing Over with John Edwards, but I can say with reluctant certainty that the home had “visitors”. Want an example? One night I was sitting upstairs in my bedroom, when all of a sudden I smelled smoke. I ran downstairs to the kitchen and discovered all of the gas oven burners on FULL BLAST.  I was THE ONLY person in the house, mind you. Also, my bedroom looked like it was straight out of a David Lynch movie. It was totally spooky.

Anyways, when I was all done recalling my former abodes, I realized I have called at least 18 different places “home”.

That SEEMED like a lot to me. I mean, for someone whose parent wasn’t in military service, anyway.

But IS it a lot? Or, nowadays, with our nomadic, on-the-move culture, is that considered an average number of homes? 

I looked it up this afternoon, and it seems that according to three year old data from the U.S. Census Bureau , the average American moves 11.7 times in their lifetime.

So, yay, I’m above average. I’ve slept around more than the average American bear.

I know it’s going to sound sappy, but I kind of hope that this is it. That THIS house will be THE house, for me and for my family, for many many years to come. Because even though it is a small house, I love the walls we are decorating with Emmy’s artwork, and the basement that is being filled with boxes of past holiday memories.  I love sleeping in THIS bed, in THIS bedroom, with my son who sounds like a pterodactyl , my David Beckham-like daughter, and my poor sleep-deprived husband. This is my home. I love calling this home.

In Your Dreams!

Last night, between the many baby wakings and feedings, I managed to have a dream. 

A REAL dream, you know? One that took me out of my bed, out of my house, out of my mommy-head…

I dreamt that it was New Years Eve, and I was a young twenty-something whose biggest worry was whether I was going to wear pants or a skirt when I went out club-hopping with my friends after midnight (after midnight! When was the last time I was actually OUT after midnight??? Just the thought of clubbing makes me slightly exhausted).  I was acting reckless and silly and… well, younger.

Waking up from the dream was strange. I mean, one minute I'm dancing like a crazy lady among crowds of friends and strobe lights, and the next minute I am lying in bed in my pajamas, with a toddler snuggled into the deep of my neck and an infant clinging to my chest, making helicopter-like grunting noises.

My first thought was how much I missed those days, when I could hang out and get crazy with my other (young) friends for endless hours. I missed wearing short skirts and taking 20 minutes to do my makeup and drinking Bailey's like it was water. 

But then I listened to my babies breathing deeply, and felt the warmth of their tiny bodies next to mine. And I realized I would gladly trade my dream life, even my really fun, really young-feeling dream life, for my beautiful mamahood reality.

Growing Pains

I can’t say I am surprised, or that I wasn’t warned.

When we took Oren to the pediatrician for his first doctor’s visit, his kind doctor asked us how Em was dealing with the baby’s arrival. C and I answered that she seemed to be doing surprisingly well, with just a few signs of anxiety here and there.

The pediatrician looked at us with sympathy and told us that it was going to get worse, and probably quite a bit worse, in the coming weeks.

Since that appointment, Emmy has done her job proving that our pediatrician is indeed a wise woman. During our second week home from the hospital, Em developed an urgent need to be held and hugged by whomever happened to be holding (or nursing) her baby brother. During our third week home from the hospital, Em rather suddenly decided she hates school and wants to stay home with us all the time (which has made the mornings around here just DELIGHTFUL). And this past week she became afraid of the dark and pitched a huge fit when we tried to turn the lights off in her bedroom at night-night time (something we have done without any resistance for the past twenty six months). 

Yesterday, when I picked Em up from daycare, she asked where her baby brother was. I told her that baby brother was at Baba and Grampy’s, and that we would be going to pick him up before heading home. Em then asked if it might be possible to instead LEAVE baby brother at Baba and Grampy’s… like, FOREVER.

I told Em that we couldn’t leave Oren at their grandparents’ house, and asked why she didn’t want to pick him up. Em told me she was scared of the baby. I asked what was scary about the baby, and Em said the baby made a lot of noise. She’s not wrong. The baby doesn’t cry ALL that often, but he does grunt and groan and make his presence known in lots of other semi-noisy ways. And when he DOES cry, he doesn’t hold back.

Poor Em. My heart really goes out to her. Her whole world has changed. She used to be able to command 100% of our attention with her cute little songs and dances. Now she has to compete with a brother who cries often, nurses even more often, and poops pretty much constantly.

To be honest, I had little hope that I would be able to make Em feel better about the situation, or that I would be able to offer any words that would comfort her two year old brain and heart. But I told her that right now, baby brother is a baby, and he isn’t much fun for her because he can’t walk and he can’t talk and he can’t play with toys. BUT if we are patient, and we wait for baby Oren to get to be bigger, he will be lots of fun, and he WILL be able to walk and talk and play games with us.

You know what? Emmy GOT it. She started asking questions that followed this line of logic, like “when baby brother is big, we can take him to the waterfalls?” and “when baby brother is big, he can eat pizza too?” and “we can take baby brother on a choo choo train when he is big?” 

Yes, Emmy. YES. If we are patient, and if we can get through these first kind of crazy chapter together, we will be able to do all of those things together, and it will be so wonderful.