Tag: sleep struggles

Cranky-man Syndrome

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Sometime last year, J gave up napping. It happens once kids turn two. They decide that napping is for the birds and stop doing it. The fools! As any parent knows, this often leads to late-afternoon crankiness. Unfortunately for me, J’s late-afternoon crankiness typically manifests in the middle of dinner and lasts until he falls asleep.

He has a fantastic ability to flip the switch on this crankiness too. Of the many things my boys can do, this one might be the most impressive. It starts with refusing to finish or even eat his dinner. We struggle to get a few bites in, then comes tubby time. He’s ok until it’s time to get cleaned up and out. That’s when the tears and the screaming starts. He becomes damn near inconsolable during clean-up, drying off, and getting dressed. If he’s feeling particularly cranky, it goes through teeth brushing as we settle down to sleep. There may be a few pockets of calm here or there, but it’s mostly loud and grating on the nerves.

As he gets older, the cranky-man tantrums are fewer and farther between — THANK GOD — but when they flair up, all I can do is take a deep breath and hang on for the bumpy ride until he falls asleep.

At the end of a long day, because it’s always a long day when this happens, I find myself praying for the patience of Job or a tequila IV, whichever is easiest. It’s days like this when I want to say, “Yea, f*ing right!” to anyone who tells me I will miss these days. Sure, I’ll miss the cuddles and the funny little things he comes up with, but I will be happy when tantrums aren’t the go-to method for communicating. I also know the day will come when waking him up before noon will bring its own frustrations. But for now, I’ll breathe my way through tantrums until I have to hold my nose to wake him up.

Is Acceptance the Same as Defeat?

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C is a terrible sleeper. He wakes up in the middle of the night and STRUGGLES to get back to sleep. The struggle is really mine. He’s just hanging out, reenacting episodes of his favorite TV shows and movies…loudly. At the end of last week, though, we seemed to turn a corner to where he slept as much through the night as he ever does. Meaning we’d put him to sleep in his bed, then at some point, he’d wake up, come running into our room, and go right back to sleep.

Then he spent the weekend at my mom’s house.

Hubby and I were happy for the break, so we could sleep through the night and do some much-needed basement reorganizing. We did a lot of heavy lifting, which made the nights sleeping in the bed, just the two of us without kicking, fussy toddlers, a delight. Readers, we even got to cuddle, just the two of us. No squirmy, cute little furnaces in between us.

We picked the boys up on Monday afternoon. They had a good time, as always, at my mom’s. And to her credit, she followed their bedtime routine every night they were there. For some reason, however, C came back, and his sleep pattern was all out of whack. It wasn’t so much out of whack as it was back to what it was before. He woke up at 1 AM both nights and wouldn’t go back to sleep for hours, if at all.

Before we picked them up, I felt rested. Even just shy of reinvigorated — the only thing that would reinvigorate me at this point would be two weeks by myself on a beach and a stack of books from my TBR pile. Since that isn’t happening anytime soon, this girl will take a few days’ reprieve and a comfy reading chair for an hour or two.

But I digress. The kid wouldn’t go to sleep. He kept singing “Be Prepared” from The Lion King. While he was singing, I was googling pressure points to try and help him. Just so you know, that didn’t work either. 😭

I think I’ve finally reached the acceptance point in my grieving over lack of sleep process. I’ll never sleep again, and I’m begrudgingly ok with it — no, I’m not — but that is what motherhood is all about, right? Sacrificing all for the sake of our kids.

Just Call Me Stuck-in-a-Rut Mama!

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Originally, this post started as me venting about how stuck in a loop I’ve been feeling. How much some days I want to let the kids take control. Nothing will shake you out of a routine like a winter in New England.

C came into our room around 1 AM — not really that abnormal — and couldn’t/wouldn’t go back to sleep — also not that abnormal — until I gave him some melatonin. While he got back to sleep, I was fully awake, playing Solitaire on my phone when A’s alarm went off at 4:30.

As I lay there lamenting my lack of sleep, A came rushing back to our bedroom, letting me know it had snowed overnight — it was raining when we went to bed — and he wasn’t going to have time to shovel our “only annoying that it’s big when it snows” driveway, so I’d have to do it to clear it for the school bus! Yay.😑

Somewhere in the middle of clearing the left entrance — we have a U-shaped driveway — the call came in that school was cancelled for the day. Why? I’m not really sure. They’d already cleared the street, and there was only about two inches in the driveway.

So my loop was interrupted by the weather and school cancellations. While the one day interruption was “pleasant,” it won’t fix the stuck way I’ve been feeling as of late.

My loop currently looks something like this: wake up. Work out. Get C dressed. Make C breakfast. Make and pack lunch and snack for C. Find something for J to eat because he doesn’t like eggs. Shower. Brush C’s teeth. Get him on the school bus. Spend the day entertaining J/cleaning/attempting to work on side projects. Rinse, lather, repeat.

I also find myself having the same conversation with the boys every day — “Stop fighting!”, “Pick up your toys!”, “Go to the potty!” It’s a miracle I still know other words in the English language.

There are some days when I’m so sick of the routine that I want to just let the boys go wild(er than usual) and let the chips fall where they may.

Of course, I can’t do that. I’ve been working on potty training J this week and have to make sure he doesn’t pee behind the couch…again. The boys also have a tendency to get into wrestling matches, usually at C’s instigation, and I have to make sure they don’t kill each other. So what’s a burnt out, stuck-in-a-rut mama to do?

Keep calm, take a breath, and soldier on. Also, hide in the pantry and eat snack pack Pringles…and pour a glass of wine while making dinner.

But seriously, I think I need to find something to balance out the everyday mundanity. Committing to my #65in365 goal is helping to keep me a little bit sane. I get most of my reading done when J insists that I can’t work, and I must watch Cocomelon/Little Angels/Blippi/Spidey and his Amazing Friends with him. Outside of that, though, what’s a stuck-in-a-rut mama to do?

I know that these things I’m complaining about are all part of motherhood, but isn’t that all the more reason to find a way to achieve the “just treading water” feeling of only communicating with toddlers all day? What’s your thing to help combat stay-at-home mom burnout?

I’m a Living, Breathing Comforter Object

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A few weeks ago, as we continued to work through C’s sleep issues, I found myself covered in children. Both boys made their way into our room in the middle of the night, as is typical. J used me as his mattress while pushing his brother away whenever he got close, trying to cuddle. Not being able to curl up next to me, C took my outstretched arm and adjusted it like a pillow, made himself comfortable, and went back to sleep.

I lay there for a moment, baffled by what just happened. My body stopped being my own, and I was a comfort object. A wubbie. A blankly. A favorite stuffy. I’m my kids’ comfort object.

As far as non-mommy comfort objects go, C had two: his wubbie and the baby blanket my godmother made for him. He loved his wubbie. Whenever he couldn’t find it, he’d walk around the house saying, “Wubbieeeee, where are you?!” We tried to ween him off of it with varying degrees of success depending on the day and his mood. We did a good job of it until the pandemic hit, and his world shifted. I decided to let him keep it and restart the weaning process later. As we were broaching the topic again, he decided on his own. One night during bedtime, he was upset, and we tried to give his wubbie to him, and he said, “No!” And then he never asked for it again.

The blanket he still uses from time to time. It lays at the foot of his bed, ready to be used at any moment. The other night when we were settling into bedtime, C got the blanket. He also brought in J’s version of the blanket, proceeded to tuck him in, then made himself cozy under his. My sweet boy.

J never really latched on to anything other than me for comfort. He likes his blanket well enough, and his stuffies are alright, but for him, there’s nothing like lying on my chest to fall asleep. This is equally sweet and frustrating. Sweet for the obvious reasons of bonding, love, etc. Frustrating because sometimes, after a day is being pulled and pushed in multiple directions. The last thing I want is to lie prone while he finds a comfortable spot to fall asleep on. I may sound like an asshole, but this kid tosses and turns over my body like a freshly caught fish flopping on a dock.

As I write this, J is curled up next to me in my bed, using my shoulder as a pillow. I know I should, and I do cherish these moments because there will come a time when cuddling with me is the absolute last thing they’ll want to do. It’s just a struggle sometimes to find some autonomy for myself while being any and everything to my boys.