Cute Kids Through Fatigue-Tinted Glasses
This is a husband post [see, it happens... sometimes... :) ]
Just wanted to share a little life with the kids with you.
To start, of recent Liz has been very co-dependent in her sleeping, she refuses to sleep in her bed unless one of us is in the room (and since she learned to climb out of the crib, this became a problem not so easily glossed over with a closed door and desperate apathy, plus this past week we moved her to her toddler bed).
If we’re lucky and trick her or outlast her, she’ll fall asleep in her room, but 1-2 hours later, you'll hear the quick slapping sound of little fat bare feet on the cold tile floor as she comes running in. Usually, I’ll hop awake to get her and spirit her back to her room before she wakes up too much and lay her back down.
The first two or three times in the night I do a good job, then I start moving slower and she penetrates deeper into our room, towards her exhausted goal: Mommy. Anyway, to fight this off, last couple of nights we’ve been letting her sleep on the floor in our room on the princess couch. And this works well, so far, at least up to about 6am or so, by which time Ashley has usually joined us in bed. Then Ashley starts waking up and she is rarely quiet about it.
Anyways, this particular morning, Ashley’s in bed, starts waking up, and I send her to her room until 7am (that’s the ‘official’, if not well-enforced, rule - for Ashley, anyways). I try to get her there as quickly and quietly as possible, so that Liz is not woken up. C’est la vie, it does not work. And around the time I’m groggily returning to the land of some sleep and no rest, Liz is waking up and getting in between Kimberly and I and our sleep - in our bed. So, I'm down to “just go to the living room or something, please!” This directed at li’l 2-yr-old Liz, who kind of conforms (not quietly by any means), while Kimberly and I do our best to try to go back to sleep.
Fast forward about 30 minutes of what in some under-developed situations such as ours will be termed ‘sleep’ – and I finally get up to check on the girls. And thus get one of the wonderful tableaus that makes the rest of it endurable (which about 50% of the time are tableaus that in themselves are not within the ideal bounds of discipline, but hey, who's counting…) So, I’m assuming that Ashley is still in her room until 7am (pseudo-time-out), and looking for Liz, but Liz is nowhere to be found. Finally, against better judgment (who’s kidding here, I no longer have ‘better’ judgment, the kids have whittled my judgment options down to one pathetic lump of proto-judgment), I go into Ashley’s room.
And there are my two and four-year old, sitting quietly on Ashley’s bed at 7am in the morning, wearing bathing suits (Liz is not in her state-mandated diaper) and working their way through a container of Pringles. To fully paint it, this is one of those ‘frozen tableau’s’ – where they stop and stare at you, knowing that they’ve probably done something wrong, but not quite sure what (or at least not quite willing to ADMIT they know what). Later it turns out Liz might not have her diaper on, but at least she put on a pair of Ashley’s underwear under her bathing suit.
Cute, adorable, and without any redeemable value – except another sweet memory of semi-innocent beautiful mischief.
p.s. I apologize that there was no property damage (which it may sound like I was leading up to), just kids eating Pringles in bathing suits at 7 in the morning, but I swear, it was very cute. And next time, I'm sure I'll have some real damage to discuss...
Just wanted to share a little life with the kids with you.
To start, of recent Liz has been very co-dependent in her sleeping, she refuses to sleep in her bed unless one of us is in the room (and since she learned to climb out of the crib, this became a problem not so easily glossed over with a closed door and desperate apathy, plus this past week we moved her to her toddler bed).
If we’re lucky and trick her or outlast her, she’ll fall asleep in her room, but 1-2 hours later, you'll hear the quick slapping sound of little fat bare feet on the cold tile floor as she comes running in. Usually, I’ll hop awake to get her and spirit her back to her room before she wakes up too much and lay her back down.
The first two or three times in the night I do a good job, then I start moving slower and she penetrates deeper into our room, towards her exhausted goal: Mommy. Anyway, to fight this off, last couple of nights we’ve been letting her sleep on the floor in our room on the princess couch. And this works well, so far, at least up to about 6am or so, by which time Ashley has usually joined us in bed. Then Ashley starts waking up and she is rarely quiet about it.
Anyways, this particular morning, Ashley’s in bed, starts waking up, and I send her to her room until 7am (that’s the ‘official’, if not well-enforced, rule - for Ashley, anyways). I try to get her there as quickly and quietly as possible, so that Liz is not woken up. C’est la vie, it does not work. And around the time I’m groggily returning to the land of some sleep and no rest, Liz is waking up and getting in between Kimberly and I and our sleep - in our bed. So, I'm down to “just go to the living room or something, please!” This directed at li’l 2-yr-old Liz, who kind of conforms (not quietly by any means), while Kimberly and I do our best to try to go back to sleep.
Fast forward about 30 minutes of what in some under-developed situations such as ours will be termed ‘sleep’ – and I finally get up to check on the girls. And thus get one of the wonderful tableaus that makes the rest of it endurable (which about 50% of the time are tableaus that in themselves are not within the ideal bounds of discipline, but hey, who's counting…) So, I’m assuming that Ashley is still in her room until 7am (pseudo-time-out), and looking for Liz, but Liz is nowhere to be found. Finally, against better judgment (who’s kidding here, I no longer have ‘better’ judgment, the kids have whittled my judgment options down to one pathetic lump of proto-judgment), I go into Ashley’s room.
And there are my two and four-year old, sitting quietly on Ashley’s bed at 7am in the morning, wearing bathing suits (Liz is not in her state-mandated diaper) and working their way through a container of Pringles. To fully paint it, this is one of those ‘frozen tableau’s’ – where they stop and stare at you, knowing that they’ve probably done something wrong, but not quite sure what (or at least not quite willing to ADMIT they know what). Later it turns out Liz might not have her diaper on, but at least she put on a pair of Ashley’s underwear under her bathing suit.
Cute, adorable, and without any redeemable value – except another sweet memory of semi-innocent beautiful mischief.
p.s. I apologize that there was no property damage (which it may sound like I was leading up to), just kids eating Pringles in bathing suits at 7 in the morning, but I swear, it was very cute. And next time, I'm sure I'll have some real damage to discuss...
posted by The Armstrongs at
8/10/2005
