Must be doing something right

Every so often, one is the witness/recipient of such a run of Behaviour that one is tempted to pull out one’s fingernails, just for the welcome distraction the pain might bring

You know, those days when every utterance out of a child’s mouth is a version of, “I didn’t want you to do that, and you did it wrong, too.” When every action is the equivalent of them stealing your last bite of pie, only to spit it out because it’s yucky. When they insist that the best way to show their love for you is to crash into you full speed while braying like a donkey and laughing hysterically at your bruises. When it’s all you can do to excuse yourself quietly from the room, hide behind a locked door, rub your temples and breathe and count the minutes until bedtime and the reprieve from the banshees who have taken over the household.

And then — and then — one happens upon a tableau such as this:

And, just in case you thought it was a fluke, this:

Yes, that is the big one reading stories to the little one. By reading, I mean a mixture of memorization (he’s sort of the human equivalent of a Kindle, what with all those books he's got stored in his head) and actual, sounding-out-the-letters-to-make-a-word reading. And the little one, formerly hostile, is now rapt, in awe of books, taking my hand and pulling me to the shelf to find Sandra Boynton's Doggie Book or one of DK Media’s thousand-plus books about trucks. His new favourite sentence (after, “Mommy go get it”): “I want to read.”

And now, in addition to saying yes, we can also say, “Go ask your brother.”

Makes up for a lot, that.

When preschoolers hand you lemons...

Look what my girlfriend made!

I would say she just whipped it up in the midst of a particularly chaotic Saturday afternoon, but “whipped it up” would imply effortlessness, and this baby was a bit of a palaver. The making, chilling, and rolling out of the dough. The — literal and figurative — lemon squeezing involved in making the filling. The separating of eggs, the beating of egg whites into meringue. The assembly. The baking.

All told, it was a marathon of a pie. Rachel kept apologizing for attempting such a complex feat of baking on a weekend day, with children underfoot. Rangy, rangy, rangy children. “If I’d known it was going to be so much work,” she kept saying, “I never would’ve started this.”

Which kind of sums up how I was feeling about having kids right at that particular moment. Our morning had consisted of a series of tantrums, from adults and children alike, culminating in a tear-stained Rowan running down the driveway just as I was about to put the car in gear, screaming, “I am too going to the maaaaaaaaaaaarket!”

Minutes earlier, of course, he had refused to get into the vehicle, declaring loudly and repeatedly that under no circumstances was he going to the market. Rachel had finally thrown up her hands in disgust and gone back in the house with him, while I and a blinking Isaac, already in his car seat, were left outside. For a brief, shining moment I thought that Isaac and I might have a sweet little date together, sans four-year-old attitude. In the end, I strapped Rowan in, fed him a banana, did some deep breathing, and braved the public with both children, leaving Rachel at home for a blessed hour or two to stare at the wall or do Sudokus or drink herself silly — whatever she needed. She reciprocated that afternoon when I strapped Isaac into the stroller and wandered around the neighbourhood for an hour or two, listening to This American Life on my iPod. As I left, Rachel and Rowan were arguing about whether he could or could not stick his fingers in the mixing bowl while the electric beaters were running.

When I returned, Rachel and Rowan had reached some sort of truce. They had managed, together, to get the pie into and out of the oven. Then they played chase in the basement and read books. The kitchen was spotless. And this beauty was cooling on the counter — cloudy layers just obscuring the sunny sweetness underneath.

Strangers in the night

So much of (mildly successful) co-parenting — of successful cohabitation, really — is about resisting the urge to itemize and compare just how much work each partner does. Because, trust me, little good comes from statements like, “But I changed the last poopy diaper,” or, “How come I always cook?”

According to my research, such statements are likely to unleash an escalating and entirely unsettling volley of stored-up comparisons regarding laundry, bed-making, snow shoveling, lawnmowing, recycling, garbage, Kindermusik attendance and child fetching.

Yes, of course, every household has its imbalances — and those imbalances do occasionally need to be addressed — but I have found that, more often than not, comparisons invite trouble. Because, at least in my household, a LOT of stuff gets done, and when it all shakes down, Rachel and I freely admit that neither of us can recall doing about half of it. When the tallies come in, it’s quite likely that the balance of meals cooked and diapers changed will come out about even, and that, if they don’t, other things will very likely make up for them.

That said, Rachel is being shafted when it comes to sleep.

We’ve been alternating nights in the basement and upstairs. And on my nights upstairs (barring one too-early wake-up on Isaac’s part, fairly easily dealt with), the kids have slept through. Meaning that I’ve had a full week’s-plus of full-night sleeps.

Rachel, not so much. For some reason, on her nights on call, Rowan wakes up with strange neck pains (landing us in emergency) and Isaac’s eyeteeth poke painfully into his gums. Every morning that Isaac and Rowan bound into the basement to wake me and Rachel trudges in behind them, I ask, hopefully, “How was your night?” And she shakes her head.

After about a week of this, I let her have two nights in the basement. I was mildly, selfishly, worried that I had now got myself onto her schedule, but instead I got two nearly full nights in my own bed. And then, last night, a third night in the basement, while Rachel was up, on and off, with Isaac from midnight to about 3:30.






From my perspective at least, Isaac is much improved from his worst. And, aside from the neck thing, Rowan is sleeping like a champion, inspired at least in part by ye olde-fashioned sticker chart, with the promise of a trip to the ice cream store once he amassed seven stickers. (Do you like my artwork, using dried-out markers? Do you think the title is too subtle? We went to DQ on Monday after picking the kids up from the babysitter’s; Rowan had a chocolate-dipped kid’s cone, and we watched him do a couple of full-body shudders as the sugar began its madcap ride through his bloodstream. “We did this to him,” I kept reminding myself as we dealt with a whole bunch of hyper for much of the evening. “This is our fault.”)

From Rachel’s perspective, things still kind of suck. And while I don’t generally condone the constant repetition of, “But why? Why always my nights?”, in this case I can hardly blame her. All I can offer her is sympathy, another night on the futon, and the promise that, almost certainly, my nights will come.

Pride and joy

Lest you think that bronchitis has brought out the best in my children, I thought I would share a little fantasy (and, I stress, it’s a fantasy) I’ve been harbouring of late:

You know those Wild Kingdom, National Geographic–kind of TV shows, the ones with long shots of the animals on the African veldt, the elephants trumpeting and the gazelles leaping and the lions stalking the gazelles?

Eventually, they always cut to a shot of the lions lolling about, full after the kill, with the cubs wrestling in the dirt around their parents. And eventually one cub or another gets a bit too close or a bit too uppity or refuses to put on its snowsuit and the mother lion half snarls and picks up her heavy paw and whacks the cub sideways with it.

And the cub rolls off, ass over teakettle (I fear I’m mixing metaphors here, but what the hey). If there were a sound effect it would be from a cartoon, and it would go something like i-bid-ee-i-bid-ee-ib-ib-ib-i. And the cub eventually comes to a stop and gets to its feet and shrugs and shakes itself off and goes back to playing, but with JUST A LITTLE BIT MORE RESPECT.

Until the next time.

Sometimes, thinking about that is what gets me through the next five minutes.

So it’s not quite Lord of the Flies... So sue me.

Until Tuesday, Rowan’s best friend at school was Robyn. Robyn with a Y not an I, as Rowan tells me, repeatedly. Robyn, who sits on the Q on the alphabet rug, right next to Rowan on the Y. Robyn, who we saw one time at the swimming pool with her mom and her baby brother. Robyn, who once showed up miraculously at the public library while Rowan was there and was all he talked about the rest of the day. “If we go to the library, will Robyn be there?” he now asks.

When I dropped him off at school a few mornings ago, Robyn was waiting for Rowan in the junior kindergarten courtyard. They stood, silent, facing each other in their snowsuits, smiling shyly, rapturously, for about a minute. Then they ran off to play together. And a little piece of me melted inside.

But yesterday, yesterday Robyn got mad at Rowan for pushing her. “But I didn’t push her,” he tells me. I am the recipient of enough flying hugs and inadvertent head butts to know that Rowan isn’t always necessarily aware of the degree to which his body, his actions, can affect others. I’m fairly sure he didn’t mean to push, and I have no doubt that she could have easily misinterpreted his clumsy puppy love.

In any case, Rowan is a bit forlorn. He told the story to me and to Rachel. He and his babysitter drew a picture for Robyn after school. And during last night’s bedtime story, when Rachel got to the line in It’s Okay to Be Different (which you should buy, by the way, and not only because it’s been banned by several uptight school boards) that reads, “It’s okay to make a wish,” he said, “I wish Robyn were my friend again.” I nearly cried when she told me that.

Internet (as Dooce would say), it’s taking a lot for me not to swoop in and fix this. All I wanted to do for a few minutes last night was to get hold of Robyn’s phone number and call her parents, explain the situation, and get the two of them back together. I wanted to write a note to their teacher, asking her to intervene, to make that little girl be friends with my little boy again. I imagined walking Rowan to school tomorrow, waiting for Robyn, and brokering the peace.

But I will do none of that. I will stand back and offer support judiciously, quietly, when asked or when it truly seems that Rowan is in over his head. I will let Rowan give his picture to Robyn himself. I will talk to him about his feelings. And I will see what happens. And I am sure that I will do the same thing over and over and over, when Rowan is 12, 14, 17, when his heart is broken and he broods silently in his room for hours, playing ballads on his guitar, writing bad existential poetry. Here’s my pledge: I will watch, and I will ache, and I will listen, and I will nod and cluck and — if permitted — hug. And I will not interfere.

But, man, it’s gonna be hard.

In which sleep “training” takes on a different meaning

Continuing along with my current theme of “bribery,” we seem to have hit upon a solution to Rowan’s night fears. Remember those monsters? The ones that were waking him up at night? So that he woke us up at night — four, five, six times? So that we were so strange with fatigue it felt like we had a newborn in the house again?

What do you do about monsters? I asked. What you do about a three-and-a-half-year-old boy who wakes up frightened in the night and wants his Mommies?

The answer: give him a really good incentive to stay in bed. This occurred to me suddenly on Saturday evening as I lay, dazed, on Rowan’s bed as he jumped onto it from his dresser and back. We had to make staying in bed more attractive than getting out of it, even in the face of monsters.

I racked my brains for that kind of incentive and came up with the jackpot: James. As in James the red train. James of the pack of Really Useful Engines of the Island of Sodor. As in James the toy character who was recalled last year because he was covered in lead paint. Which is why he has been sorely missing from Rowan’s ever-expanding portfolio of Thomas trains.

But now, James is back in production. And, I figured, he just might be Really Useful in this situation.

I ran the idea past Rowan: if you can stay in your bed for five nights — and not wake up Mommies — then James will come to your house. He stopped jumping. A slow smile spread across his face. “Okay,” he said.

We went downstairs to get paper and crayons, and I put my considerable artistic skill to work, copying a picture of James from one of Rowan’s books, and, underneath, drawing pictures of Rowan, Isaac, and Mommies all asleep in our beds. Smiling. We taped the drawing to the wall above Rowan’s bed. And then I drew the numbers one to five above James.

And crossed my fingers. I had no idea whether this would work, whether he had actually grasped the whole concept. We talked about it a lot — how everyone needs to sleep, how Mommies get tired when he wakes us multiple times, things he could do (cuddling his stuffed animals, telling the monsters to go away) to make himself feel better if he woke up at night. But I was skeptical: did he really get it? Even if he did, would he be able to stop himself from coming to get us when he woke up?

That night, we heard him whimpering in his sleep at about 10 p.m., but he quieted on his own. He got out of bed just once, at 4 a.m. — not perfect, but a marked improvement.

Next night, same thing.

Night number 3? He slept through. At 7:30, he called from the top of the stairs “Mom! It was three nights I slept in my bed!”

Same with nights 4 and 5. And this morning, James was waiting for Rowan at the breakfast table. And Rowan was thrilled. And so were we. (In a tiny bit of cosmic coincidence, Isaac — uncharacteristically — slept through as well last night. Yee-ha!)

I know I’ve been talking a bit about bribery in these posts, but in all seriousness, this one strikes me as a bit different. It’s the first time I’ve seen Rowan figure out and work toward a long-term goal. It’s the first time I’ve seen him really empathize with us and change his behaviour accordingly: “I won’t wake you up. I’ll let you sleep.” If a twenty-dollar (unleaded) toy train buys us a good night’s sleep, it’s worth it to me.

People can debate forever the merits and drawbacks of rewarding kids with material things. Used judiciously, I think it’s a fine parenting strategy. In any case, if you want to see some poor parenting strategies, why don’t you just come on over to our house after we haven’t slept for five nights straight? Cuz we’re marvels of parenting then. All aboard!