Life with a Male Toddler

Here is one back-story: When I was pregnant with Girl (five years ago), I expressed doubt and concern to my friends and other authorities about waking up at night to tend to a newborn's needs. I am a very heavy sleeper and always have been. This can only be interrupted by Christmas Eve, the night before the first day of school, and it turns out, RLS. Everyone was unanimous: don't worry! My maternal instincts would kick in and I would wake at the drop of a pin. Night one rolled around and... I did not wake. My husband woke to Girl's fussing (in fact, he often leaped from the bed (not an exaggeration) on occasions when she had made not a peep. (He dreamed otherwise.) Kevin has been bringing distressed children to me ever since. I have persisted in not waking almost any night since then merely for the cry of any infant. Sometimes I sort of half-wake, do whatever I have to, and then fall back asleep without any recollection of the events that have transpired. Mostly I sleep-tend. I am a world champ sleep-nurser and my babies have learned to come to me. Thankfully Kevin has remained very alert.

Here is another back-story: Boy is a climber. He is 21 months and has broken his arm once already, falling from the play tower in the back yard. At the time of this telling, one of his favorite activities is to systematically pull out the drawers on his dresser to form stairs so that he can scale to the top and then jump into his crib. Stairs are a magnet to him. We don't have any, save the small flight outside the front door. My sister lives 45 minutes away, so often when we go to visit (especially with relatives in town) we will crash in one of her two upstairs guest rooms. You see the problem. Boy has already been caught once at the top of the stairs in the middle of the night by my terrified mother.

Back-story three: Boy is known for sleep-acrobatics. Ever since he was just a few months old (see old blogs, in fact), he has done strange things in his sleep and in the middle of ours. He will somersault around on the bed in his sleep, wander to the other end of the house and call for us behind the laundry room door, even (this is his latest) leave the bed and lay down on any spare pillow on the floor for the rest of the night. This is the reason he sleeps on a low futon and why our mattress is currently on the floor. We methodically make sure bathroom doors are locked and kitchen is gated off every night before bed.

Last night we stayed over and Dan's and Lindsay's. We stayed in our usual room on a two-double trundle; Kev and I and the kids all pile in on the two levels. We put the child-proof gate at the top of the stairs at the other end of the hall (it is removeable and Boy has a knack for removing it) and then put some "diversions" in front of it, just in case, to slow Boy down in the event of... well... Then we went into the bedroom with sleeping children, shut the door, locked it, and put a rather heavy chair in front of it. Not great in the event of a fire, but, well, we know our son pretty well. In the dead of night I suddenly heard/intuited Boy calling me from out in the hallway. I was covered with a sheet and blanket but I woke up in a full run, sort of in air, and in the dark hurdled over the debris in front of the bedroom door, did a U-turn in the hall, and sprinted for the stairs. There was my child, moving the last piece of "distraction" in deliberate silence. I scooped him up, and even in my stupor, felt simultaneously horrified and grateful. I put everything back where it was, re-locked, re-fortified, and fell into the bed with him, my body curled around his like a ball as we both fell quickly back to sleep.

The moral: raising children can be terrifying. Often.

Good night and good riddance.