Thunder dome

Oh yay, the kids have come up with a new and exciting way to drive me crazy at 6:30 am: they lay on their backs in their cribs and kick the gate side, which then rattles like thunder through the house. Imagine three at once. I should be proud that they are creative and inventive, no? I should be impressed by their imaginations, but you know? I think I'd rather sleep.

And, naturally, I can't do much to stop them because if they get attention from it, negative or positive, it will just be more fun. So, no yelling, threatening, begging, pleading or even tying them down to their beds will do. (The latter mostly because I'd get arrested.) So we get to 'live through it.' We get to ignore it and hope that even though there are three of them to cheer each other on and give them the reinforcement that they need to keep wanting to do it, they will get bored of it eventually.

Or the gates to the cribs will fall off and we will have insta-toddler beds. That would be great. Three kids running loose in their bedroom at all hours of the night. FAN-effing-TASTIC.

Wouldn't puppies have been easier?

Oooh that little....#2

Oh them crazy kids. You go through all the trouble of training them at night by not responding to every cry and they start sleeping through the night (say at 6 months of age?) only to find that 6 months later you're right back where you started. Somehow, unbeknownst to you, child A has started a pattern of waking every night at 4 am, sounding like she's had a nightmare. So you rush in, night after night and stupidly wonder, why the increase in nightmares? Maybe she's going through a developmental change? Maybe she's getting sick?

No. She's just training your stupid butt to get up every night at 4 am and pat her. Sure the first time was innocent, she probably did have a nightmare. But nights 22 and 23? Probably not so much. So it takes an aside question, asked while at the doctor's office for freaking hand, foot and mouth disease, about supposed increases in nightmares around this age to be set straight. Because the kind doctor in all his wisdom basically tells you that you're being taken for a ride.

How did I not recognize this for the 89th time? I mean how many times does one of my children have to take advantage of my kindly sleepy stupid self before I realize it on night 2 instead of night 22? Or rather, before someone else calls it to my attention? I mean duh? Every night at 4 am she has a nightmare? Really? Is sleep that predictable?

And another question I'd like answered. How is it MORE disruptive to B's sleep when I go in and shut that girl up within moments (tiptoeing silently as humanly possible) than leaving her caterwauling for 20 minutes? But oh it is! The minute I turn that doorknob, silently mind you, because I have developed the instincts of a ninja when it comes to making no noise, that boy is up and looking for attention. And god forbid I give attention to the screaming child first, he then screams himself. Or heck, even if I give the screaming child second shrift? He still screams when I give someone else attention.

So, my nights are about to get easier. I have, for the past 2 nights, lain in bed listening to the varying cries of my daughter, and she is inventive I must add. I have struggled, felt guilty, analyzed every nuance of those cries, because she changes them up just to throw me off. And yet, she is alive in the morning. Smiling, happy. And we are both more rested. What a freaking paradox children are. Now the trick is to find all the other ways they are fooling me. Think I stand a chance?

Aaaaaaaah. That's more like it.

Ok I'm back. thanks to a stretch of 4 or 5 hours and another of 3 that was given to me last night by my still sick but possibly drugged into submission children. No, I only drugged one. And she still woke up 4 times. But she spaced it out better. The night before she had done a 10, 11, 12, 2, 4, 4:10, 4:20, 4:30 thing that pretty much killed me. Not to mention the diaper explosion of B at 5:30 immediately following. I mean, when it rains, it pours, right? I'm hoping that when I head in there this morning I will find then all over the third cold and A's eye will just turn out to have been a cold symptom and not have turned into pinkeye overnight. That would suck. Because my chances of not having three pinkeyes? Miniscule.

It's amazing how you can have night after night of miserable sleep and just one night with a longer section or two can completely revive you. I feel like a human being today. I can handle whatever thousand things I should be doing, smile at my kids, make it through without counting the seconds to bedtime the minute they get up from their nap and so on. Or I think so. The rest of the day remains to be seen. The first order of duty is a shower. Somehow with or without help, showering on the weekends is a lost cause. And yesterday? Just too tired to step into the box. So I stink. And tonight is date night. Gotta try to look good at least because hubby does.

I am fairly certain, however, that something must go wrong. For goodness' sake I have 3 toddlers. I am dreading a visit to the dr today. I am prepared for pinkeye so that wont send me but you just never know and I have a bad feeling. I have learned that my bad feelings are generally right on. I'm like a bloodhound on the trail of bad news. I'm sure you'll all be waiting on the edge of your seat for an update...

On sleep

Speaking of evolutionary principles, what is the point of fighting one's bedtime till all hours when you know perfectly well you will be up at 6 am no matter when you fell asleep? It seems mighty counterintuitive seeing as how doctors have shown that inadequate sleep will affect you negatively in many ways. So why do toddlers fight their parents, sometimes for hours each night, about falling asleep in their beds and then spend the next day all bleary eyed and crabby for all to enjoy?

Of course it's not just the toddlers is it? How many of you adults out there fight your bedtime constantly? I say almost every day 'today I'm going to go to bed early because I feel like crap.' Does it happen? Oh no. Despite the fact that I know that my impatient, tired toddlers will be rattling their cages loudly and screaming starting as early as 6, I watch one more crappy show, read one more magazine, send one more email. I know I feel like my justification these days is that once the kids finally go to sleep I need a couple of hours to decompress but really? I'd feel better in the morning with less decompression and more sleep. And honestly? I didn't go to bed on time before I had kids.

So what is this about human nature? I'm a morning person and I still can't get into bed on time. So I spend my days dragging around trying to find the energy to play with three wildcats and rueing the lack of sleep I got last night, because in addition to my stupidity one or more babies may have had a bad night and awakened me 3 or 4 times for comforting, and I think to myself that there must be a reason we do this to ourselves? Perhaps the saber toothed tiger was on the prowl in early evening and we needed to be up to watch for it?

In contemplation of the noble tantrum

What is the evolutionary principle behind tantrums? Can you imagine, just imagine, cave mamma Ugg with child #1 standing just outside cave mouth #43 on Cave Mouth Street grinding corn or preparing to go out and gather and little cave kid Ugg Jr throws himself to the ground and pounds his tiny fists and kicks his tiny legs and screams like a bear to get what he wants? Do you suppose she rolls her cavelady eyes and hands it to him? Because I don't. I see cave mamma taking her club out and giving him a good whack.

Imagine, again, Mayan momma standing in the hot sun after harvesting corn (oh I'm not an indigenous tribe specialist get off my back) watching Mayan girl baby screaming to be allowed to play with that last ear of corn, because it had become her toy, and not giving it to Mayan momma immediately upon being asked. Do you think she might be tempting the Mayan god to select her for the heart sacrifice? I think I'd tread a bit more carefully if I were that kid.

And imagine, if you will, prairie settler family Miller just put prairie kid Joseph to bed and he throws a tantrum to the point of barfing on his bedcovers. Do you think that in an era of no washing machines and no multiple sheet sets he was allowed to do this time and time again for no apparent reason and not end up sleeping amidst his barf particles? I think not. I think he'd be washing his own sheets pretty soon in the river with bloody knuckles of his own. I think he'd learn pretty stinking fast not to barf in his bed. His mom wouldn't be running with his barfing self out of the nursery to try to stop the inevitable sheet change one stinking time. I don't think so. Heck, he'd be lucky to have a bed. And if he barfed in mom and pop's bed? I think he'd be hoeing a row of crops before he was 2.

I mean how did tantrums achieve anything until the current parental administration where we overindulge such children? In the last, what, 50 years there's been a sea change from children being a necessary production of help mates for the household to children being our entire reason for the sun coming up in the morning and goodness knows you better not wake/upset/scold/deny/deprive them. So I see how it's evolutionarily useful now. It works like a charm to lay your tiny little body down in the middle of a packed grocery store and go to town with tears and snot because you bet your mom is going to scoop your butt up and get you anything to shut you up so she can finish shopping because this is the one stupid chance she gets all week to get groceries and if she can't now you'll all starve.

Well not this mom. That kid and I will either be standing there annoying the rest of you until he's done with his theatrics or we leave and we starve. I know it looks bad to the other judging eyes and I've been them too, but you know once you're the parent that the difference between a tantrum and a true cry is so obvious to you at some point early on in getting to know this kid that you can not allow yourself to indulge the former. Because that only means more in the future. And those judging eyes? They can go have triplets of their own and then judge me. Well, maybe not even then. Because this is my kid, and for some unexplainable reason tantrums are there in the animal brain, even though I'm pretty sure that our ancestor apes used them to better effect and they should have been extinguished as a useful strategy somewhere around the 1300s, BC, and there is NOTHING. I. CAN. DO. ABOUT. IT. So smile sweetly and move on rubberneckers. Nothing to see here.

Walter the nightmare pooch

Product warning: Walter the Farting Dog, a toy we have possessed for over a year, a toy which was a mainstay of my daughter's crib because she loved it, has the potential for a total meltdown. Yes, one night, while you're watching some DVR-ed crap on TV and enjoying reading your blogs, you will hear over the baby monitor "thbthpthbthpthb." Then a minute later "thbthbtpthbbb." And again, and again. Until you decide that your daughter must have her foot on the dog, causing its unintentional flatulence at a critical juncture of the sleeping period of three, count them three, easily perturbable babies.

So you'll tip toe into their nursery, reach for the dog, right where you remembered it from checking on your daughter earlier, and at the moment you grab it you will find, to your horror, that it will go completely bezerko. Like some stuttering rap star of farting, it will begin to fart incessantly but in a staccato rhythm that is so very not conducive to sleeping triplets. Instantly you will step into hyper speed, exiting the nursery at the speed of light while praying simultaneously to every god in the pantheon that not one triplet will be disturbed by this insanity of a fart festival.

I am now sitting in my living room listening to the last and dying farts of a Walter the farting dog. Somewhat sad at it's passing, but also somewhat relieved that it is shutting the heck up after trying to wake all three of my damned babies! Heed my warning parents! This is NOT a good crib toy!

A public service announcement from yours truly.