It’s been a week of many highs and lows… and it’s only Wednesday.
Victory: Monday morning I heard Jacob wake-up and use the bathroom. Then after several minutes of silence, I got scared he was cutting his own hair or drinking mouthwash. Turns out he had crawled back into his bed. This has never happened before. A mini parenting miracle.
Victory: A big meeting at work went really well.
Defeat: Then an unexpected conversation at work.
Victory: We strategically planned spaghetti dinner night and kid in-home haircut night on the day before the cleaning lady comes. Brilliant.
Defeat: I had to wrestle Nate into submission to get his hair cut while he sobbed and resisted and cried, “I don’t yike it. I don’t yike it!” To my embarrassment, he hit Toni, couldn’t be bribed with cookies or a new truck, and left me a snot-and-blond-curl-covered mess. Now before you go freaking out about the trauma he may have endured, let me just say that I mentally calculated all possible alternatives while simultaneously whispering sweet nothings in his ear and constraining him in a knee-lock:
1) Let him go and then do this all over again in two weeks
2) Continue the knock down drag out match and shave his darling hair completely off
3) Take him to a kid barber and let him thoroughly embarrass me in public, rather than in the comfort of my own home
4) Or just grow his hair indefinitely and at some point, change his name to Natalia
I opted for option 5) Traumatize my child until he’s sweaty and exhausted and then lavish him with compliments about how cute his hair looks and stuff him with spaghetti. Top it off with a new, unbroken cookie to ease the pain. Plus, I’d already written the check.
Victory: I put Jake to bed and was not required to return a half dozen times.
Defeat: In the middle of the night I heard my name. Jake had his first significant nighttime accident after a dream about peeing in the pool. I’ve told him before, no p in the ool. We fumble around in the dark, change his pajamas, and he crawls into our bed.
Victory: I tell him he has to go straight to sleep and there will be no kicking of Daddy. He complies.
Defeat: The kid is a furnace. I am too hot and can’t fall back asleep on the balance beam that has become my side of the bed.
Defeat: As I’m crawling into the top bunk, back in Jake’s room, my knee lands on the handle of his butterfly net which pops up like a rake and hits me in the face. I set the alarm on my iPad and cuddle it in the fetal position.
Victory: I thought I’d turned my alarm off, but my dutiful husband comes to wake me up. I hear him come to the door, then go to the living room, then come back and look in Jake’s room, and then leave again. For a split second I’m sure he thinks, “She wouldn’t sleep in her car, would she?”. I peek over the side and he finally sees me… after his delightfully uninterrupted night’s sleep.
Tag, you’re it.
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