I know we got insanely lucky with the mini, lucky I was able to conceive naturally after my 45th birthday, lucky that she was born totally healthy and amazing. So god knows I’m not complaining here. But let me complain for a second.
It seems she’s hitting her terrible two’s a year early. I suppose I could be grateful for her advanced development, like some parents are when their kids walk early. (“She’s only one! And she’s already in her terrible two’s!”)
Instead, I feel like my head has been blown off and I’m walking around with shards on top of my neck.
Two weeks past her 1st birthday, and she’s terrorizing us. In Japan, they use the term “house-
She was sick last week, and while thankfully she is no longer ill, she has held fast to a little peccadillo she developed when she had a fever: insisting on being rocked to sleep between the hours of 2-5am. And then being rocked while she’s asleep, too. So she wakes up and cries around 2, and then after I rock her and her breathing slows and that peaceful half-smile of slumber has stolen across her face, I start to bend over the crib to put her down. And she immediately tenses her entire little body, limbs stretched in rigid protest even though she is seemingly still asleep, and the minute she touches down on the soft mattress of the crib, she is up and wailing the saddest–and loudest–song of woe.
So that’s how we spend our nights now. Like a Mobius strip of rocking and refusal.
This has gone on for a week, and this morning we were out walking to do errands and I looked down at my torso and I realized I had become one of those mothers I always swore I’d never be: the kind who walks around with some kind of unidentified–but clearly bio-hazardous–substance strewn across her shirt. What bothered me even more is that I couldn’t muster the energy even to care. I just shifted the lining of my coat to cover it for a second and then left it there all day.
It’s now late afternoon and the mini has finally gone down for one of the naps she has also been refusing to take all week. I’m coughing and sneezing and exhausted and so tired I couldn’t eat today, once again fueled mainly by my new three food groups: caffeine, ibuprofen, and, once dinner-time hits, wine.
I’m craving sleep and a nap, and my knees and back and my right hip are all killing me from walking around with her in the baby carrier. But I’m also 47 and my baby is just past 1, and I want to be around for her when she gets older. I want to be on the other end of the phone line for her when she is in her 40s and she has a child who has momentarily derailed her.
So, instead of sleeping, I’ll wipe the bio-hazard off my shirt, roll out my yoga mat, and try to keep my aging body as young as possible. All while keeping my eye on the monitor, of course, and praying with all I have that the house terrorist doesn’t wake up from her nap.
