So at 5:30 the baby wakes me. I groggily bring her into bed and nurse her until she is no longer interested. Then she spends the next half hour rolling around between the husband and me, talking, kicking, cooing, kicking, you get the drift. Finally the husband rolls out of bed to shower and puts R on the floor with some toyswhile I get a few more minutes of shut-eye.
Meanwhile 3-year-old C awakes and while she is occupying her sister, I manage to stumble into the bathroom to take care of the necessary potty, teeth, and contact routine. By now it’s 7am, and I am ready to face the day. After wrestling the nighttime pull-up off C, and we make our way downstairs.
C requests pancakes. See prior post. This project takes up a good portion of the next hour. A few (okay, FIVE, but who’s counting?) pancakes and a cup of coffee later, I am finally feeling human.
It’s 8am and the baby is acting sleepy. Back upstairs I try to nurse her down for her nap, but that’s a no go. She is more interested in filling her diaper, which is always a signal that sleep is not forthcoming. So with a clean diaper, back downstairs we go.
I opt to leave kitchen cleanup for later and spend a while on the computer. By 9am, R is acting really sleepy. I know the sandman is at work. Back upstairs we go.
On our way up, C requests a puzzle. Now a good mom would come back down and get the puzzle and get her set up so she will be occupied, but no. I’m lazy, and I tell her that when I’m done getting R down, I will get her puzzle. She seems satisfied by that, and I make my way to the baby’s room prepared to nurse her down to sleep.
It’s dark and quiet in the nursery, and I relish the few moments of peace and quiet and snuggling with the baby who is growing and changing way too fast these days.
Then the next thing I know, BANG! CLATTER! CRASH! WAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! Mommyyyyyyyyy! Mommyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!! CRASH! CLATTER! Mommyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!! R’s eyes pop open. Startled out of dreamland, she tries to sit up.
Mental head slap. Is it too much to ask for 5 minutes of peace and quiet? Bad words run through my brain as I try to decide whether to just give up on the nap and go down and see what’s up or to wait it out and try to get the baby down and then go deal with the mayhem.
(Now before you think I’m the worst of moms, and wouldn’t I dash downstairs the second I hear such a ruckus, and aren’t I worried about a serious injury after all that noise, you have to know my daughter C. She is a professional klutz. She rarely if ever has had a serious injury, but she has a couple dozen falls and minor boo-boos every day, and she is also a drama queen and makes each incident sound like the world is coming to an end. I can tell by the tone of the "Mommyyyyy!" that she is not seriously hurt, but upset that her well-laid plans had ended in disaster.)
Then… CLATTER! CRASH! ALL SORTS OF RUCKUS!!!!!! Mommyyyyyyyy!!!
I give up. This is obviously a situation for Mommy. Getting up, I start to make my way towards the stairs, and I hear 6-year-old D coming to the rescue. In his most paternal voice, "It’s okay, C. Come with me. You can watch me play video games, okay?" I watched from the top of the stairs as he hugged her and then gently led her out of the playroom (out of the clutter of puzzle boards and puzzle pieces which were obviously the result of all the chaos as she tried to pull them down by herself off a high shelf).
With peace and harmony restored, I returned to the nursery to finish putting the baby to sleep. Fortunately she was so tired that not even the ruckus from a few moments ago was enough to disturb her quest for sleep, and after a few minutes of rocking she was ready for her crib.
I once again opted for the computer (and a second cup of coffee) over cleaning the kitchen. Which means now the kitchen still awaits, we are all still in our pajamas, and it is now 10am.
C is on her second breakfast, another plate of pancakes, and D is in the living room playing whatever creative game that little boys do (it sounds more like a herd of elephants than a single 40-pound 6-year-old in imaginative play). R is still blissfully asleep in her crib upstairs. I guess it’s time to start my day!
