I am going to need to have a sit down with my soon-to-be 9 month old Mochi Cakes and explain to her that she was born into a household of Night Owls, therefore, there is no room for Early Birds in this nest. She's taken to waking up at about 4:45 a..m., all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to rock for the day. I've always been able to nurse her back to sleep in my bed with me until about 7:30, but now she wants to roll around and climb on me and pull my hair and shriek and chatter away in my ear, therefore forcing me out of bed at a most unGodly hour.
9 months old and still not sleeping through the night. Fantastic. She started to go in that direction for awhile there- there was a light at the end of the tunnel! Then both she and Jude got sick for like 2 weeks and fucked it all up. So here we are again starting over and I'm tired like I was the first couple of months after she was born.
C'est la vie with a child.
I forgot how when babies start doing new things- like crawling or sitting up- it can disrupt their sleep cycle. They'll sit up in the night and not know what to do, or crawl into a crib corner and be too sleep induced to know how to get back out. It's gotta be rough being a tiny human being learning how to function in the night- when it's dark and you wake up all disoriented. A lot of us never even manage to master the ability to sleep soundly through the night into adulthood- so I empathize with babies.
Once babies have discovered their mobility, they are up and ready to get moving before roosters have even gotten out of their beds. They have sights to see and places to crawl to and things to pull up on- and older brothers to piss off.
5 a.m.? The day is a-wasting! As tired and disheartening as it can be to realize when you are stupid sleepy that, "Yes. This is happening. We are getting up now," I'll open my eyes and look at her lying next to me, with her round happy face right up next to mine, patting my cheek with her chubby little hand, smiling her two toothed grin, and I turn all melty and light as a feather.
Ooooo-K. You win.
Jude too hit this up and at 'em stage at Mochi's age. You'd think that as a now more seasoned mother of two, I'd be more prepared for it, but I'm still all but retarded in the mornings. I just am not wired to be up that early.
If you aren't my babies, don't talk to me before 8 a.m. I might punch you in the face.
I don't understand how Early Bird people do it.
I will say that I have gotten better at maintaining a more cheerful-if-not-still-drunk off lack of sleep mood- but my cheerful face is only for my babies. My husband need not apply. This is because it's difficult to be cheerful with someone who has been snoring like a God damn bear all night in our bed while I get up to tend to the baby in the middle of the night, then again before sunrise to collect the baby and later to wrangle our grumpy 3 year-old boy who has the attitude of a 14 year-old boy when he wakes up and is forced to get ready for school.
Husband will often wake up, emerge from our room after getting ready for work and proclaim how tired he is, recalling,
"Man, Mochi just didn't want to sleep last night. I hardly got any sleep at all!"
I wonder how many other wives/mothers have heard this lamenting and felt appalled at the audacity of their husbands for even musing over the restlessness of their infants, after they have YES been woken up, but rolled over and went back to sleep, completely unfazed and oblivious to any obligation to get up and comfort the baby back into their own sleep?
Tired? You're not tired. I'M tired. He'll argue that it's not a contest- but I beg to differ. Oh yes it is, buddy. It is most definitely a contest of who is more tired- and I WIN.
Anyways. This complaint is nothing. Sometimes it feels good to get it off my chest- release it out into the universe and set it free. Then the beat goes on and another day marches forward. Husbands and wives getting on one another's nerves over child related incidence? We're not alone. That's a comforting thought.
So Mochi is on the Go. It's a lot of fun. She's in my very favorite baby stage. I learned with Jude that this crawling era in a baby's life is very short and very precious- because the next era is the toddling era, when they get up and on their feet and transition into the "I suddenly have an opinion and will run away from you" era. They're still babies, but not BABY babies anymore. It happens so quickly. When they are in this crawling stage, they are still baby babies, but mobile- and their little tushies are so cute when they scoot around the house. The only thing that isn't cute about this stage is listening to Jude freak out about his baby sister going after his things- which is CONSTANT.
Never dealt with this with him of course, because as the first and only, he never wanted for anything. Everything (well, almost everything) he had full access to. No jealous or territorial siblings to get in his way. Little siblings don't have this luxury. I think it will make Mochi a tough little cookie, growing up with a big brother like Jude.
I got my fireball child first and my easy going child second. I'm pretty happy that I have had the opportunity build a tough skin with Jude, because every day with Mochi (Vivienne) is a little slice of strawberry cake.
I can't tell you what a relief it is to hold this mild-tempered baby- particularly on Jude's more emotionally explosive days. It's just a part of his nature- and a part of his age I'm sure, but sometimes I think my little boy is crazy. I think, "Omigod- you have got to be crazy. What did I do to make you so fucking crazy? I don't even know what to do with you right now, Crazy!"
Jude's stuff is the only stuff Mochi wants to play with. Baby toys, what? She wants Thomas the Train. She wants Hot Wheels. She wants big colorful preschool Legos. Whatever Jude is playing with- that's what she wants. Of course, Jude is thrilled about this, you know, since sharing toys with a tiny creature who has come into your life and stolen a lion's share of mommy and daddy's attention isn't enough change to deal with. 3 year-olds are super open to change and sharing. Didn't you know?
One of my biggest pieces of advice to a new mother-to-be would be not to waste too much money on baby toys- because the first baby only wants to play with tupperware, pots and pans and other household objects. Then the second baby also only wants to play with those household items, and even more so, their older siblings possessions- and they will all but raise an eyebrow at you as if to say, "Are you serious? What in the hell am I supposed to do with this crap?" when you dork out attempting to entice them with the baby toys that the first one never really played with either.
I hear shrill, "That's MINE!" cries at least 100 times a day. Jude is a bipolar teddy bear. One minute cute and cuddly and huggy and lovey and doting on his baby sister whom he calls, "Wittle Moe" (short for Little Mochi), bringing her things to play with and begging to hang out with her in her pack and play. Then the next minute he's trying to push her arms out from under her while she's crawling, getting in her face shrieking about a laundry list of different things that she's doing to annoy him, climbing on top of and over her, or snatching toys out of her hand and angrily declaring them to be his no matter what the objects are, be them kitchen spatulas or rubber baby blocks he hasn't touched since he was 6 months old.
Mochi is resilient. She gets an iron kung fu grip on whatever she gets her hands on, and Jude often has to fight her to pry it out of her hands (when we're not intervening of course). She doesn't cry or fuss- and almost seems amused and pleased with herself for getting her brother all worked up. Then she'll willingly give it up and move on to the next thing.
Some days everything she does gets on his nerves.
"No Wittle Moe- you can't sit there. That's mine!" in reference to sitting on the living room floor. The floor is his.
"Stop it Wittle Moe- don't wook at Gretchen bear! That's mine dog!" in reference to our dog. The dog is his.
"No Mochi- no eating. Don't eat! STOP EATING!!!!"
Taylor wondered aloud the other day when this kind of behavior will stop. He has two younger sisters and he still pesters the shit out of them when we all get together. I reminded him of this and his face fell. I'm pretty convinced that it's going to be an ongoing thing for a very long time- to lesser and more severe degrees as the years go by.
But you know what's crazy? When I get even just a tiny window of time when the two of them are getting along and playing harmoniously- and I get to watch them learn together how to cooperate and share and get along and communicate in their own teeny tiny person way- the feeling of peace that washes over me makes all of the frustrating other behavior and challenges worthwhile. I enjoy every second of it because those moments don't last very long before the "That's MINE!" song and dance starts again.
It's a circus- but I love my family circus. I love my cute husband and my crazy little monkey and my sweet little pink elephant. In my circus, I think I would totally be the ringmaster, but I think that Husband would say that he is the ringmaster.
I say that the person who best and most efficiently tames the circus animals is the ringmaster... and that would be ME. Mom!
