Montana Momoirs

Montana Momoirs
By Sara Groves - 07/18/09
Bedtime blues and terrible 2’s

I’ve never been much of a “rule” person; the result is a house without a lot of rules that govern my children’s lives.

Of course there are the rules that keep them safe. My children are not, for instance, allowed to stick forks into electrical outlets nor are they allowed to juggle sharp knives.

But there is one rule that is beyond the general common-sense safety precaution and it is: “Do NOT get out of your bed from the time I put you in it until the time I get you out of it.” As with most rules, there is an exception to this one and it is: “You may get out of bed only if you roll over and discover your lung on the pillow next to you.” Everything else can wait until morning.

My 5-year-old, Mike, tested this rule once — once — when we first moved him from his crib to a regular bed. During his very first nap in his big boy bed, I heard the pitter-patter of little feet overhead so I yelled up the stairs at him, “I’d think twice before I ever got out of that bed on my own again!” The little pitter-patters beat tracks back to the bed and that was that. To this day, once Mike is in his bed, he’s in his bed until I come and get him out of it.

But Peter, my 2-year-old, is a very different child from Mike. Peter has been hefting himself over the rails of his crib since he was about 11 months old. We used to always know when Peter had climbed out of bed because the loud “thunk” that indicated his landing would send Brent and I dashing up the stairs to check for spinal cord injuries.

Lately, Peter has been following our golden rule of staying in bed. But he stays in bed and screams about nothing — shrieks so loud that the neighbors have commented about it. The whimpering starts as soon as Peter and I approach his bed and by the time I have peeled him off of me, he is in full-blown wailing mode. By the time I get downstairs, the shrieking has commenced.

So Brent and I have been taking turns running back upstairs to the screaming and sobbing Peter who always, in response to the question, “What’s wrong?” replies, “I don’t know.” Surely a child would not shriek like that without a reason, or so goes the logical adult thinking process. So Brent and I begin a litany of questions, “Does your tummy hurt? Does your head hurt? Does anything hurt? Are you hot? Are you cold? Are you scared?” And the answers from Peter go something like this, “No. No. No. No. No.”

Nothing appears to be wrong and, of course, nothing is wrong. This is just a 2-year-old’s struggle about going to bed — which pretty much sums up being 2 years old. Because if it’s not a struggle about going to bed, it’s a struggle about sitting down to eat a meal. Or learning to pick up after himself. Or using the potty. Or accepting help with a task. Or leaving the toy store. Or going to the store. This age isn’t referred to as the “terrible twos” for no reason after all.

But that doesn’t make it any easier. By the time the boys are in bed at night, I am tired — very, very tired. And pretty much done with them for the day, hence the “stay in bed” rule. If, for instance, Peter starts throwing a tantrum at lunchtime, I feel like saying, “Bring it on, little man. Show me what you’ve got.”

But by bedtime, I feel like waving a white flag and crying “Uncle!”

In spite of my aversion to parenting after 9 p.m., Peter’s bedtime tantrums show absolutely no sign of letting up. So we’ve established a new rule at our house and it is: “No yelling. Ever. About anything.” There is an exception to this rule as well and it is: “You may yell only if there is a very large amount of blood spurting from your body or if you look down and one of your limbs is no longer attached.”

Of course it’s one thing to establish rules and another thing to get a 2-year-old to follow the rules — which pretty much sums up parenting a 2-year-old.

Montana Momoirs Column

It seems like an eternity ago now, but for a brief time, between roommates and a husband, I lived by myself.

After the initial shock wore off (I can shower with the door open! I can take my shoes off and leave them in the middle of the floor and only I will trip over them!) and the initial worry (What if I choke to death on a bite of this pizza and I’m only found after the smell of my decaying body alerts the neighbors?), I reveled in my aloneness.

I loved the quiet. I loved the orderliness. I loved that any mess was a mess of my very own doing.

But then I got married. And had a baby. And another baby. And I haven’t been alone for more than an hour or so in more than five years.

While I welcome those very rare hours of solitude when Brent takes the boys with him to the store or the three of them go on a hike together, that type of solitude is very different from the type of solitude that comes with truly being alone — for days or longer.

When you have small children, you look at an hour of alone time not as a leisurely 60 minutes for lounging on the couch. Instead, it is a marathon to see how much you can finish before your family crosses the threshold again. Because it is amazing — amazing — what I can accomplish in an hour without having to stop and negotiate arguments, find and fix toys, attend to various new wounds, assist with bathroom needs, explain how airplanes stay in the sky and why father deer are never with their babies, and — did I mention — having to stop and negotiate arguments.

So when my mother-in-law announced she was planning to visit and wanted to take us all camping, and I realized I had some work commitments that couldn’t be rescheduled, I said to my husband, “Why don’t you take the boys and go without me?”

I’ll admit there was a part of me that hemmed and hawed and worried that I would be forever scarring my children by sending them into the woods without me. But there was a much bigger part of me that said something like this: “YAHOO! Four days and three nights of blissful, glorious, idyllic solitude! Whatever will I do with all of that time?”

And then the boys left. Old habits die hard, so my first order of business was to clean the house and pick up toys that were scattered in nearly every room. Then I just stepped back and thought, “What next?”

Fortunately, the phone started ringing. A friend needed me to take her and her family to the airport. I stopped for a minute, wondering what to do with my own kids since we wouldn’t all fit in the car, when I realized, “I don’t have to think about child care!”

When another friend asked me to attend a yoga class with her at night, I stopped and thought about having to get dinner on the table before I realized, “I only have to get dinner on the table for me! And I can eat at midnight if I so choose!”

When another friend asked me to go out for drinks, I thought about getting home in a timely fashion to help get the boys in bed before I realized, “I can go out drinking all night long and nobody will care!”

Not that I actually probably could go out drinking all night long anymore. But the opportunity was there.

So there was the yoga and the drinking and the airport drop-off, but there was also curry for lunch and dinner with no one complaining about how bad my food smelled. There were long, hot showers without anyone peeling back the shower curtain to see where I was. There was actual thought put into a book selection at the library instead of just haphazardly grabbing something off the shelf as I chased my toddler through the stacks. There was a leisurely No Sweat Café breakfast with enough coffee to cause heart palpitations.

There was also quiet, a noise to which I am no longer accustomed. And I realized that I missed the little voices and their incessant questions and rambling associations about cottage cheese and bunny rabbits and the neighbor’s house. There was also orderliness, a state our home, in which we have lived since Mike was a baby, has perhaps never been in. And I realized, when I stumbled on a construction site under the dining room table, how I missed making dinner amidst fire trucks and ladders hooked to all my cupboards.

That first night of solitude, I stopped in the boys’ room to check on their blissfully sleeping figures, as is my nightly habit before I crawl into bed myself. As I stared at their beds, I was struck by how small and very empty their beds seemed. And I realized, not for the first time, how small and empty my life seems without them.

Montana Momoirs Column

Good morning small children. I hope you have received and reviewed the memo I placed next to your pillows last night. Oh. I forgot that neither of you is old enough to read. Allow me to recap the highlights for you.

In short, I have a lot going on personally and professionally right now that is creating great stress in my life and, in case you have missed the obvious as of late, it is putting me in an extremely foul mood. We will all be a lot happier if you comply with the following new house rules that have been instituted this very minute:

a) No complaining. No whining. No fighting. No crying. In fact, let’s just do it up right and say that talking, singing and laughing are also forbidden. We will pretend we have taken a vow of silence. Won’t that be fun?

b) You must eat every bite of your meals. Happily. Even if it is sautéed Swiss chard, always a 2- and 5-year-old’s favorite. Even if it is broccoli — without cheese sauce. Do I hear complaining? Refer to Point A above.

c) There will be no gas-passing. There will be no bending over and cheek- separating for pretend gas-passing. There will be no blaming of me for gas passing, as in when one of you passes gas, usually at the dinner table, and then looks at me and gleefully announces, “EXCUSE YOU MOM!” before collapsing with fits of hysterical laughing.

d) You are not allowed on any of the furniture. Not that our furniture is especially nice — at least it isn’t nice anymore after five years of sticky hands and faces, trampoline usage and fort building. You will sit on the floor. But not on any of the new rugs. You will enjoy the nice hardwood floor, which also isn’t so nice anymore after five years of trucks and ride-on toys.

e) Since we have taken a vow of silence, this shouldn’t be an issue, but I’ll throw it out there anyway. No repeating of questions or phrases. Just because I do not respond to every one of your utterances within milliseconds of words hitting air does not mean I did not hear you. I heard you — the very first time.

In short, you are no longer allowed to act as if you are 2 and 5 years old. You must act as if you are very well-behaved middle-aged people, who just happen to be very quiet.

Now that we have the new rules established, what shall we do today? You want to do a craft project? OK. Let’s get out our supplies. No. Wait. I will get them. No. I said no.

Hmmmm … perhaps if you’d listened and allowed me to get out the craft supplies, then that giant bag of feathers wouldn’t have exploded causing our house to resemble a chicken coop for fuchsia and turquoise poultry. Let me get out the vacuum.

I know we have the loudest vacuum on the planet and that it scares you, but using the broom will not work. So put the broom away. Put it away. No. Using the broom will only make the feathers fly around more. You just hit me on the head with the broom. I know you’re sorry and that it was an accident, but it still hurt and since I am already in a bad mood, I will stagger around as if Wile E. Coyote just dropped a grand piano on my head and I have an eight-inch lump growing out of it with stars circling. Unbelievable! You just hit me on the head again! Put that broom down!

Why is the glue out? I’m still trying to clean up the feathers. Put the glue back. Why are you pouring glue on that piece of paper? Stop. Stop! Give me the glue bottle. What am I doing? I’m trying to scrape an entire bottle of glue back into the bottle. No…put the broom down! Put the broom down!

Well. Now that we’ve all been tarred and feathered, let’s go into another room. Let’s do something quiet. And easy. Let’s look at one of our library books. Oh no! Quick! Go get a towel! Faster! I know it was an accident. And I’m sure this isn’t the first library book to be returned with coffee spilled on it. What will the library do? I’m not sure. But really, the more important question here is, What am I going to do? That was the last of the coffee!

Let’s go outside and have a snack. How about some raisins? Raisins are easy. What can possibly happen with raisins? You did NOT just shove that raisin up your nose. Blow it out. Blow hard. How far did you stick that up there? I’m not paying for another food item to be extracted from your nose by an emergency room doctor. I’ll do it myself. Where are my tweezers? You got it! Good job. You have a big booger in your nose? Well, I don’t have any Kleenex right now. Here. Use my shirt.

What’s next? You want to have a squirt gun fight? All right. But don’t squirt me. Hey! I said not to squirt me! Ha! I’ve got the extra squirt gun! You’re in trouble now! I got you! All right - laughing is allowed during squirt gun fights. I will also allow gleeful shrieking. No, you don’t have to act like old people anymore. I guess it’s OK for you both to act like little kids.