Mendolonium

I’ve been crabby the last few days. So I thought I would share it with you.

The weekend started off poorly with Thomas waking up at least three times between Friday night and Saturday morning. Poor Jeff bears the brunt of it. In an effort to encourage Thomas to sleep at night and eat during the day we have, for the past couple of months, not let Thomas nurse from the time he goes to sleep until about 5:00 am. Thomas absolutely will not fall asleep for me without nursing. As the lucky non-nursing parent Jeff goes into Thomas’ room and rocks and co-sleeps with him (not in the crib, we have a twin bed in there – although now I am amused by the idea of Jeff squeezing into the crib); generally whatever it takes to get him to sleep. I get to lie in bed and listen to Thomas protest this caring treatment by his father – it’s not what he wants and he lets us hear about it.

We thus began Saturday exhausted. At the farmer’s market on Saturday morning I forgot several of the items I need to purchase and thus threw off my meal planning for the remainder of the week. It is a small thing to forget a lime, however, rather than come up with an alternative dinner I suddenly didn’t feel like cooking at all and wished for what we could not have – takeout Indian food. While Thomas napped I went out to the garden. Rather than see an abundance of healthy plants, I saw tomatoes falling over in need of trellising, beans bursting out of their starting containers in need of transplanting, and screens for our windows in need of stripping (they are covered in peeling lead based paint). Later, I tried to rally my will to cook and come up with another Indian dish when I looked in the fridge to discover that the paneer (Indian cheese) I had made earlier in the week had turned pink and fuzzy. I gave up and made some thoroughly unhealthy but thoroughly good dip out of refried beans, Velveeta, salsa, and hot sauce. At least the chips I dipped in it were organic.

On Saturday night Thomas actually slept through the night (from about 10:00 pm to 6:00 am) for the third time in his eighteen and half months. We were thrilled but also confused and demoralized, what had we done differently and how could we repeat it? We spent Sunday morning at The Huntington checking out the new Chinese garden and the children’s garden with friends. It was lovely, however, exhausting. We thought that after such a busy morning he would surely take a great afternoon nap, however, it was not to be and he awoke after just over an hour seemingly refreshed and ready to conquer the world. Raising Thomas is amazing and wonderful but also so very tiring and confusing. It honestly feels sometimes that Thomas is a tiny adorable alien receiving instructions from the mothership designed to confound his human parents. Perhaps they go something like:

Instructions for the week of 5/26/2008

* Wake up between 2 and 4 times per night with the exception of 5/31. On 5/31 you are instructed to sleep “through the night”. This will ensure that your parents do not become so exhausted that they drop you.
* On 5/31 nurse only twice during the day causing your mother to become concerned that you are weaning yourself. On 6/1 nurse eight times, causing your mother to wish she had weaned you.
* As your mother is putting you to sleep stop to talk about “rain, thunder, and ice (hail)”. Then discuss other events from the previous week as they occur to you. Suggested topics: your grandparents, that time your dad fell down, fish, and parts of the face.
* When in doubt as to the answer to a question shout out “turtle”.
* Above all: Never stop moving!

Sigh. I realize that we are unbelievably lucky. We have a healthy (for the most part) little boy, we are financially stable, we have a lovely home, and we have a plenty of good food to eat. We could just use a break. Unfortunately, Monday morning didn’t bring one. We woke up to our front yard having been toilet papered and egged during the night. Frustrating for anyone. But for Thomas, potentially life threatening. He could go into anaphylactic shock from simply touching an egg. So Jeff spent his time after work today painstakingly cleaning up our front yard. It never ends does it?

Well, I’ll tell you how I am ending tonight: by eating a hot fudge sundae or a slice of cherry pie. Perhaps both.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 2nd, 2008 at 10:02 pm and is filed under Me, Thomas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.