How foolish of me to think I could go up against the mighty power of the Jinx!
After two nights in which she slept for 11-hour stretches, last night Kate returned to her old tricks and woke up at 2:30AM. I really shouldn’t complain because I nursed her and she was back asleep in no time.
But still. I should know better to have ever said anything.
Zeal was over to babysit a few weeks ago. (Yes, when you live in Northern California the friendly neighborhood teenager’s name is Zeal.) Zeal is a good kid and seems pretty responsible, but he’s fairly young still and so when he sits for Kate it’s always when she’s already gone to sleep and we just need someone sitting in the house to sniff the air occasionally for signs of fire.
So he was over and we were going out to dinner with Melissa and Adam, who are also parents. And Zeal’s hanging out chatting with everyone as I run around and do things like move my wallet of the diaper bag into a big girl purse. And Adam says something about Kate and Zeal says, “Yeah, she’s never woken up any of the times I’ve been here to babysit.” And all four of us stop in our tracks and whine, “Zeeeal. You’re not supposed to say that! Now it’s jinxed.”
For some reason you can take a person who is otherwise not superstitious at all, make them a new parent, and before you know it the almighty Power of Jinx is a governing force in their lives. It’s like you’re suddenly slung back into 1st grade step-on-a-crack-break-your-mother’s-back rules. And it all comes from early in your baby’s life, when you’ve gotten burned because you mentioned to someone, “Yeah, Kate doesn’t really spit up a lot.” Or: “It seems we’ve finally said goodbye to the ‘evening fussies.’” Or best yet, “She’s been so great about going down for her naps lately.” Of course, the moment the words are uttered your baby has somehow intuited your smugness and resolves to display their powers to un-do exactly what it was you were so thrilled about. Bookies in Vegas should take money on the odds, because it’s amazing how often it happens.
And as all parents of babies know, especially when it comes to all things sleep related, you don’t f around. Your baby’s sleep, and therefore your sleep, is a commodity more precious than gold, platinum–you name your gem or precious metal.
With all that said, it is with extreme trepidation, and with many an offering to the gods and godesses of all things jinxy, that I share this tale.
The night before last I woke up and rolled over, catching the numbers on the clock along the way. It should be know that if you can see a bright strobe of light emanating from the earth skyward, it’s my alarm clock. The numbers on my clock are so blindingly bright that I could put my pillow over it and I’d still be able to make out the time. At any rate (geez, I’m good at tangents, eh?), the time on the clock was 3:30AM. And Kate had not woken up yet.
Generally she’s been waking up once a night, any time between 1-ish and 2-ish, at which point I go nurse her, slap her back in the crib, and she sleeps until 7:00 or so.
Mark happened to also wake up when I’d rolled over, and he too had the time burnt into his retinas by the laser light of my clock. We discussed the significance of the situation.
Me: It’s 3:30 and she hasn’t gotten up yet.
Him: Wow.
Me: Do you think she’s okay?
Him: I don’t know. Yeah…probably.
A few minutes pass in which we both feign non-concern.
Him: Can you hear her breathe on the monitor?
[I turn up the monitor volume and press it to my ear. I just get hissing white noise.]
Me: Hard to tell. Can you hear anything?
Him: [With ear pressed to hissing monitor] Uh, no.
Me: Do you think you should go in and check on her? But if she’s just sleeping and we wake her up, maybe we’d be screwing up the first night she sleeps through the night.
Him: Yeah, I don’t know if I’ll be able to get in there without waking her. It’s risky.
Me: You know, I’m sure she’s fine. I’m going to go back to sleep.
Him: Yeah, you’re right.
Then I fell back asleep and Mark laid in bed ramrod awake for the next 2 1/2 hours.
Eventually at 5:30 I woke up when I heard Kate squawk. Hooray! She is alive and she slept for a record stretch (from 7PM to 5:30AM)! Double happiness! And no, she wasn’t up for the day (thankfully). I nursed her and she went back to sleep until her usual 7-ish wake-up time.
Then last night (Gods of Jinxitude, please have mercy on me for sharing this), she slept straight through until 6AM.
Let it be known I would NEVER imply that a new pattern is forming. Do that and I’ll be up with her every two hours for the next month. All I’m saying is that it was nice to have her sleep the way she did for the past couple nights.
Now we’ve just got to work on Mark’s sleep.
Yesterday, man, were we cranky. I’m not sure who started it but Kate was not herself. Maybe teething, maybe just asserting an uglier part of her personality that thankfully has been dormant for much of her existence. And she didn’t take a morning nap and then I was jangled because it didn’t give me a break and then I was snappish with Mark and/or either he or I or Kate started it all and it unraveled from there. At any rate, there was not a lot of merrymaking at this house yesterday. Nothing too terribly miserable either–just cranky.
At one point we took Kate to a local kiddy park that a kind of crazy person in the ‘hood always talks about, and once we were there and Kate was on the swings for 3.5 minutes Mark and I looked at each other and wondered what else to do. Sometimes you just forget what to do with the baby and the time before her bedtime stretches on infinitely, like when you’re watching the clock at a temp job.
And during this jaunt to the park, in which we spent a sum total of 8 minutes (but were at least grateful for having used up that much of time), Mark said something about the four-day weekend and running out of baby-entertainment ideas. Even though I was right there with him–baffled as to what to do with her, with all of us, next–it was an interesting insight into what it’s like to have a job and not just do the Kate thing day after day.
This is of particular interest because I now have a job. Well, I got a job and I guess that means I “have” it, though it hasn’t manifested itself into something that I go and do yet. Right now it just exists in the abstract, and my attention is focused on telling my friends and family the “I have a job” story, and looking for a nanny.
I met a nanny today who I’d held out irrational hope for as being a perfect Mary Poppins. She was the first person I interviewed and even though she was smart and sweet and seemed to be someone who would be responsible and maybe even fun with Kate, I didn’t feel like she was The One. She didn’t sufficiently flip out over Kate’s beauty, intelligence, and charisma. And the fact that I didn’t love her, and either apparently did Kate, left me feeling like I might get to a place of feeling desperate or scared or having to make a childcare decision that doesn’t rock me to my soul with right-ness. Though really, I know Mark and myself enough to know we would never do that.
Today Kate exhibited more nap-refusal and crankitude that made me start thinking like Mark was yesterday. Soon there will be a day when I know that even if she’s having a rare grumpy day or even just an episode, I’ll have another place to go/thing to do tomorrow, and somehow that will make it easier to endure the fuss. (Of course, even having that thought made me feel guilty…)
It reminded me of the thing that you do when you’re moving out of New York City. (I did this, but I assume anyone who leaves there does it too.) So, when you move out of New York, in the time that you know you are moving but you haven’t yet gone, you let all the totally crappy things about living there seep into your consciousness. Actually, you not only let them seep in, you celebrate them:
No more urine drenched subway tunnels!
No more $17 omelets!
No more having your feet in your shower stall when you’re sitting on the toilet because your bathroom is so damn small!
Well, you get the point. There is no place like New York. The place you are going won’t have anywhere near the energy or the opportunities or the 4AM Indian food delivery. But you need to rationalize hard about how you are making the right decision.
With my return to work date looming, I’m trying to trick myself into this very headset. So I will be away from Kate for 30 hours a week. Well, I’ll have fewer stinky diapers to change! I won’t be calling Mark at his office when she’s cranky and I just need to vent for a sec because I won’t be there either! I’ll…
God, the fact is, it’s hard to even come up with the reasons why it’ll be good to leave her. So instead of thinking of all the things that suck about NYC, I think I need to focus on the good things that await me in the place I am going to.
And hopefully, I’ll have a much greater appreciation for all manner of stinky diapers, toddler meltdowns, and long days before bedtimes when I get them.
What’s that expression? Learn a new word, then use it three times and it’s yours. Something like that.
Anyway, Kate is either unclear on the concept of three or is just an overachiever (or both), because her newest word is baby, and I think she says it about 50 times a day.
Sometimes when she says it, it’s relevant. She’ll point to a baby in a stroller when we’re waiting in line at the coffee shop: “Baby!” Or she’ll see the cluster of aging birth announcements on our refrigerator: “Bay-bee!” Of course, we were all excited when she did this the first few times. “Did you hear that?” we’d call out to each other from another room. “What a smart girl!”
But since then Kate’s managed to discern the inner baby in nearly anything, animate or inanimate. At times she gets into this kind of baby channeling mode, where she repeats it over and over again while she’s focused on something like picking the kernels off of the corn cob I’ve given her to gnaw on. “Beh-bee, beh-bee, behhhh-beeee.” She kinda slurs it a bit, in a drunken way.
Or we’re driving along and she’s sitting in her car seat looking out as the highway flies by, and she’ll let one rip out of the blue, loudly and with defiance: “BEH-bee!” It can be startling.
Then there are the times when, despite myself, I’ve let the word slip out of my own lips “What a good baby I have,” I’ll coo as I’m changing her diaper, then I realize what I’ve done. She’ll look at me all wild-eyed like a junkie getting a fix: “Baby?” she’ll ask incredulously. Then with a happy languor she’ll relax and say it again, “Baaay-beeee.”
Yes, Kate. Baby.
In the past when she’s learned a new trick we’ve noticed she’s appeared to forget how to do other things. It pains me to admit this. (And Harvard, if you’re reading, this may well be how early genius manifests itself.) I asked Mark the other day if he’s heard her say Mama or Dada recently, words she’d mastered months ago. Sure enough, he couldn’t remember her having said either in quite some time.
I looked at her intently. “Mama! Mama!” She looked up at me from where she was sorting through a pile of DVD cases on the floor. “Mama!” I tried again brightly, encouraging her.
Nothing. No response. No glimmer of recognition.
She was probably thinking, “What is up with her? Doesn’t she remember that my name is Kate?”
