March 6, 2008

• Rubber Rooms

  I do not make a very good single parent.  Jamie has been incredibly difficult today, and I’m missing the man I love who also happens to be the man partly responsible for this child.   Jamie was up all night with a stuffy nose.  Since he never gets sick I don’t exactly stock my cupboards with medicine, especially after a few frequent run ins with poison control (baby locks and child proof bottles mean nothing).   After getting up with him half a dozen times before midnight, I stuck him in bed with me where neither of us slept any better, when he wasn’t tossing and turning he was snoring like a lumber jack.  On several occasions he woke me up and pointed to his nose and said “nose, mama, uh oh”.  I quite agreed. At 5:45 am we both gave up any pretenses of sleep, so we played with blocks and read books until it got too late and I ran around getting ready before dashing off to work at seven.

  As I yawned my way through a morning full of patients I figured Jamie was probably somewhere curled up in a corner about to konk out for a morning nap, but no, he made it bright eyed and bushy tailed all the way through lunch (thai food with my sisters) and I successfully kept him awake in his carseat by playing Led Zeppelin at unearthly volumes with the windows rolled down to make sure he didn’t crash before we got home.    With the speed and efficiency of a nascar pit team I raced into the driveway, had him out of his carseat and in bed with a clean diaper, and beloved stuffed duck before he even realized the car had stopped.  Mission accomplished.  I settled down for a much needed nap myself, but Jamie never went to sleep.  He talked to his duck, he pretended to sleep (and then tried to convince me he had already napped), he pretended the wall was a drumset, he snuck out of bed anytime he thought I wasn’t watching and when he finally erupted into a fit of giggles that ended with him falling head first out of bed in a somersault I decided the kid wasn’t going to take a nap.  Unbelievable.  My very tired (and spoiled) pregnant body was rather annoyed it got cheated out of a nap, but such is life.  It’s times like these when I can’t believe I’m a parent.

  I’m not always the brightest crayon in the box, so I couldn’t figure out what in the world had gotten into Jamie.  He’s been fairly well behaved lately, but this afternoon it was one thing after another.  He tried to flush his hot wheel cars down the toilet, then he stacked all his tricycles on top of each other and tried to ride them off the bed.  When that didn’t work he conquered new territory by climbing onto the kitchen counter while hauling a kid sized chair to stand on so he could empty out the top cupboard of the pantry, emptying several varieties of cold cereal all over the floor (apparently it wasn’t enough that I washed the floor three times yesterday thanks to him).  And he did this all at lightening speed (I never thought to put cupboard locks on the high ones).   The only way to keep him out of trouble was to actively hang onto him and make him stay with me.  It was like trying to hang onto a chimpanzee.  He climbed all over me, sitting on my head, trying to stand on my knees and do back flips over my shoulders, and wrapping himself around me like a boa constrictor.  It took a good four hours of pure insanity before it suddenly dawned on me what had happened.   Jamie was on a serious caffeine high.  He’d been begging for a sip of Hannah’s thai iced tea for lunch, so we gave him a little thinking he’d not want anymore (the stuff tastes like dirt), but to my chagrin he managed to down a hefty amount before we pried the straw out of his mouth amidst tears and protests.   Since I never drink it, the thought of its caffeine content never occurred to me. …until it was too late.  That stuff is loaded with enough caffeine to keep a sleep deprived, med student awake.

  So I deserved every bit of this afternoon.  He crashed hard at 7 pm and I hardly had enough time to brush his teeth and say his prayers before he fell asleep.   This probably means he’ll be up at the crack of dawn again.  <sigh>.   Surely I’m not grown up enough to do this. 

  On a more optimistic note, here are a few more pictures from Seattle. A mixture of the first part with Brandon and Vicki, and then more fun with Lily and TJ.
   
  

  

  

  

  • 1:00 am
  • 7 Comments