Be aware - this is a hastily written vent of epic proportions…..

At the risk of sounding juvenile/hormonal - I hate bedtime. Ihateit-Ihateit-Ihateit-Ihateit. Although I love my girls, and am profoundly grateful for {almost} every moment I have them with me, I. HATE. BEDTIME.

It is 10:24pm. Julianna finally fell asleep 15 minutes ago. Bella is still awake, and has come out of the room four times in the 15 minutes since her sister fell asleep. This is not unusual. Bedtime can often last two hours or more from start to finish, and usually involves tears, threats, frustration, threats, tears, anger, resentment, tears and threats. Nobody is happy.

Clearly we’ve lost the ability to control the situation and at this point I’m beginning to question if we ever really had it.

Back when we just had Bella - our lives were guided by routine and gentle schedule. Bella always thrived on predictability, and our lives at the time allowed us to provide her with that. I was ‘just’ a SAHM, not trying to be birth worker/photographer/non-profit director. Sam had not yet gotten his big promotion at work, and so had a regular schedule of 7am-4pm, arriving home like clockwork at 4:45pm every night - when we all had dinner together. Our weekends were mainly free to rest, relax and spend quality time together as a family. Bella napped at regular intervals during the day when she was younger, and went to sleep easily at night - bath, a few books, a little rock in the rocking chair, and her lullaby CD on to fall asleep on her own.

Life now is so much more hectic. It feels like we are on the go so much that Julianna has never had a regular nap schedule. Like any SAHM, I’m trying to squeeze in all my other commitments in stolen moments between meals, and diaper changes and lego towers. Sam is under tremendous pressure at work - often coming home for dinner and heading back to work until 11pm or later. Our weekends seem filled with running this way and that, errand after commitment after ‘just one more thing’. We’re trying to juggle (financially and logistically) the remodel in the midst of all the other craziness as well. We’re overwhelmed, cranky, tired, stressed, distracted and disconnected. Not surprisingly, this has turned the girls’ day to day lives on end as well.

They are such good sports, and really go with the flow quite well all day, but at night time I really feel the brunt of all this craziness coming out. The girls share a room and a queen size bed. Once upon a time this seemed a good idea, and actually used to work fairly well. Now, however, it’s just a disaster. It seems that if one of them is tired and ready to settle down, the other is wired and ready to go (and vice versa). They feed off each other, and not in a good way. About 90% of the time, Julianna demands my presence to fall asleep (the only way she’ll ever accept Sam is if I pretend to leave and she actually sees me drive away in the car - even then there’s a 50/50 chance that she’ll cry till I come in to get her anyway). Even with me there, she often finds something to cry hysterically about these days. To go to sleep, she wants to fiddle with my belly button (“Give me my belly” she says with great authority). She pinches, pokes, prods with her sharp little nails, sometimes to the point of making it scab. And I let her, I let her because I’m so desperate for her just to settle and fall asleep.

They are both tired, so tired. I have to drag Bella out of bed every morning - she’ll sleep till 9:30 or later if I let her, but then it becomes even more impossible to get her to sleep at night. Julie wakes at 5am and I have two choices - either get up with her then for the day, or lie awake in bed and nurse for the next several hours (try as I might, I usually can’t sleep through it). And yes - if we do get up at 5am, she’s still impossible to put to bed at night. Her naps are iffy at best. She’ll often go all day without a nap - especially if we’re busy and on the go. When that happens she normally falls asleep nursing around dinner time, and wakes up screaming a few hours later…and (you guessed it) it is near impossible to settle her back to sleep. When she does nap, it’s not a long one - half an hour, 45 minutes tops.

Almost every night, at some point during the entire bedtime process, I can feel myself seething with resentment. I hear how stressed and bitter and utterly horrid I sound when I speak to them - all of my frustration being taken out on them in the moment. Quite simply, I feel like a big pile of shit.

I need to find a way to make this better, for them, for me, for all of us. We’re so far out of wack though, that I don’t even know where to start. What I do know, this is but a symptom of a much larger problem - but I’ve got to start somewhere. I leave on Tuesday for a month-long trip home, where I’ll be single parenting for the entire month of July. When we return to Phoenix Sam should already be moved into the new house, so there will be yet another transition for the girls. I really, really need to start making this flow better right now, or I fear I might loose my mind at some point soon.

Still, despite it all, when they finally fall asleep I stay there with them, breathing them in, touching Julie’s soft skin, tracing the curve of Bella’s nose, watching their chests rise and fall. I guess that is what tells me that it will all be okay.

Okay - so I’m obviously the worst excuse for a blogger ever - but this was too good not to share:

Project SAHM

This was started by a fellow photographer from ILP. She is collecting funds to surprise moms with $150 to buy a new outfit. I think it is such a cool idea (who wouldn’t love to be surprised at the mall with money for new clothes) - we mothers often put so much energy into our kids and not near enough into taking care of ourselves - I can think of a ton of moms that I think deserve a bit of pampering!

Go check it out!

In your opinion, which of the following scenarios seems most likely to occur:

a)
That a certain princess who had sovereign reign over her kingdom for almost four years will somehow learn to share with her little sister and enjoy the fact that she is no longer in charge of all the toys all the time;

or

b)
That I will lose my mind in the process of trying to make this happen.

Agh……..Anyone have a copy of ‘Siblings Without Rivalry’ to lend me?

Why don’t I make sleepy children?

It is 11: 36pm and I just put Julianna down. I’m actually patting myself on the back right now, because I managed to beat her usual midnight bedtime by a whopping 24 minutes (I’ve got to hold tight to the small victories). My wee one has decided that her old 8pm bedtime was just the right time for a power nap, and wakes up after 20 minutes or so. I normally try to nurse her back to sleep for anywhere from five minutes to a half hour or more. She usually goes along with me for just long enough that I get my hopes up. As soon as my guard is down, she pops up, points at the crack of light visible beneath the bedroom door and says “do-a, do-a” in her perkiest voice. Eventually I admit defeat and open the do-a to let her rejoin the social activities going on downstairs.

Bella fell asleep about twenty minutes before Julianna, but only after two hours of yelling, threats, clothing changes, and drink and food requests. She thinks I’m the meanest person alive, I think she’s out to steal my last remaining shred of sanity. She was eventually silenced by the fact that I informed her that if she yelled out one more time I was turning the hall light off (gasp, the hall light – I AM mean). Lets not talk about my parenting ideals, they went out the window a few weeks ago.

Since alone time is far more important to my sanity than sleep, I will now stay up until 1 or 2am and enjoying the fact that I can finally, finally hear myself think. I also spend this time hoping against hope that Julianna will sleep at least an hour before waking to demand my services once more. Although historically speaking I am almost guaranteed disappointment, I remain ever optimistic.

At least they are sleeping in until 10am. If they were waking at 6am I’d likely loose it. I keep telling myself I need to get us all out of bed earlier and try to set their body clocks back – but I just don’t seem to have the will power necessary to actually do it.

My mother thinks this is all rather amusing. She repeatedly reminds me that I didn’t go to sleep before midnight until I was twelve (surely she exaggerates?). She smiles a smug smile (I think I even heard her cackle once) and makes statements that clearly communicate she feels this is poetic justice - some sort of sleep karma at work. This confirms my suspicion that raising myself and my three siblings made her a touch mean-spirited.

Presumably my girls are (after almost a month?) still on Phoenix time. The four-hour time difference means Jules is sleeping from 8pm to 6am. Although I don’t believe that is really enough sleep for my almost-one-year-old – it is at least within reason. My mother (mean-spirited and pessimistic) predicts they will adjust to Atlantic time a few days before we return to Arizona.

As for me, they can get me down – but they can’t break my spirit. I’ll just sit here and dream about the day when their children will do the same thing to them. Then it will be my turn for a mean-spirited cackle at their expense. Universal sleep karma will not be denied.

This was Bella’s afternoon snack today - she toasted the waffle (organic vegan), spread the peanut butter and chose the fruit to make the face. Would love to hear some fun and creative ideas for feeding kids good, nutritious whole food (or natural/organic based premade). How do you make healthy eating fun in your family?

Another Jong poem that resonated. Would love some suggestions of other female poets that speak to the heart of womanhood and mothering.

Woman Enough
Because my grandmother’s hours
were apple cakes baking,
& dust motes gathering,
& linens yellowing
& seams and hems
inevitably unraveling
I almost never keep house
though really I like houses
& wish I had a clean one.

Because my mother’s minutes
were sucked into the roar
of the vacuum cleaner,
because she waltzed with the washer-dryer
& tore her hair waiting for repairmen
I send out my laundry,
& live in a dusty house,
though really I like clean houses
as well as anyone.

I am woman enough
to love the kneading of bread
as much as the feel
of typewriter keys
under my fingers
springy, springy.
& the smell of clean laundry
& simmering soup
are almost as dear to me
as the smell of paper and ink.

I wish there were not a choice;
I wish I could be two women.
I wish the days could be longer.
But they are short.
So I write while
the dust piles up.

I sit at my typewriter
remembering my grandmother
& all my mothers,
& the minutes they lost
loving houses better than themselves
& the man I love cleans up the kitchen
grumbling only a little
because he knows
that after all these centuries
it is easier for him
than for me.

© Erica Mann Jong