DotMoms

A short history of sleep

By Melita

September 21, 2002
Maisie is born around 10:30 p.m. By 1 a.m. Jim is sound asleep, curled up on the couch in the hospital room. Maisie, wrapped in a blanket and topped off with a cozy hat, is snoozing peacefully beside me in her portacrib. Drugged to the gills after a C-section, I feel too strange to sleep. Instead, I alternate between changing the channels of a muted TV and pressing the button on the painkiller pump.

October 2002
11 p.m. is the worst time of day, Much wailing (Maisie) and gnashing of teeth (me). After waking up for her late feeding, Maisie often cries for two hours. Sometimes, after providing said feeding, I roll over and play dead. Jim, the patient one, puts Maisie to sleep on his chest until the next feeding at around 2 a.m.

October 25, 2002
Maisie sleeps "through the night" (11 p.m. to 5 a.m.) for the first time. We are incredibly grateful. Grateful and amazed, when she repeats the performance the next night.

2003
Maisie is a champion napper -- three (eventually, two) square naps a day. She sleeps well at night, too.

2004
Should have kept a better journal. At some point, Maisie settles into a habit of one long nap each day. I can count on three blissful hours. Somewhere along the way, however, we neglect to establish a solid bedtime routine. Luckily for us, Maisie is an easygoing child, and this isn't a big problem. Until, inevitably, it is.

March 2005
Jim takes a month-long night class. At home, inspired by the powers of Supernanny, I work hard at getting Maisie to bed. I succeed at making it happen between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m. Nevertheless, my technique is a bit slack. I can still be coaxed into reading additional stories or letting Maisie fall asleep with the light on.

April 2005
Everything unravels. I am relieved to have Jim around in the evenings, and he takes over the bedtime duties most of the time. He has never seen Supernanny, and he has his own technique: reading stories, then falling asleep in Maisie's bed. For me, the window of peace and freedom in the evening is a guilty pleasure. I learn to wake Jim up by sneaking in and poking him, otherwise he'd probably stay there all night.

June 21, 2005
On this, the longest day of the year, the sunset is at 8:41 p.m. All summer, Maisie won't go to sleep unless it is completely dark -- around 10 p.m. It's hard to argue with Mother Nature.

November 2005
Maisie's daytime naps dwindle to a stop. Unfortunately, there is no corresponding decrease in the hour of her bedtime, which, in fact, creeps later and later. Now Jim has to put Maisie to bed every night; she has become thoroughly accustomed to falling asleep with him. I won't do that with her, so I am officially the bad guy. Even when I read the stories, Jim has to come in afterward.

January 2006
I ask Jim to let me know when he is ready to try another way of getting Maisie to sleep. Until then, there seems to be no point in me trying to establish a bedtime routine that will only get upended when it is his turn.

February 10-17, 2006
A waking nightmare. Now Maisie won't fall asleep until 11:30 p.m. Bad moods all around.

February 18
Major milestone: Jim is ready to try something different.

February 26
One week into a new life of regular, peaceful bedtimes and, yes, copious kicking ourselves. Why did it take so long to figure this one out?

Here's what worked for us:

• Bedtime routine begins at 9:30 p.m. (soon to be earlier, now that we have a plan).
• Parents take turns putting Maisie to bed.
• Maisie picks out her stories (she can't add to the list after making her selections).
• Designated parent reads stories, says goodnight, then turns out the light.
• Parent sits in a little chair next to Maisie's bed, and holds Maisie's hand, if requested.
• Maisie falls asleep. Parent leaves room. Success!

This first night of the new routine was a little rough. I did the honors, and Maisie cried for Jim. Even so, it only took about a half-hour (after the stories). Now, it only takes Maisie five minutes to fall asleep, with either parent.

How do you handle bedtime?

Melita is putting down roots in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and 3-year-old daughter.

21 questions

By Melita

Mommy, can I have cereal for breakfast?

Yes, Maisie. I will get it.

Where is my milk?

I will get it after I finish fixing the cereal.

Can we make Daddy some orange juice?

Yes, after you eat some of your cereal.

Can I help squeeze the oranges?

Yes, Maisie, after you eat some of your cereal.

Where's Daddy?

He is upstairs getting dressed.

When he comes down can we give him some orange juice?

Yes, but you have to finish your cereal.

Can I play with Daddy today?

No, you're stuck with me.

I finished my cereal. Can we make the orange juice now?

Can I finish my coffee first?

No. I want to squeeze the oranges now. Can I slice them?

No, I need to use the sharp knife. You can squeeze, though.

Thanks, Mommy. Is this good?

Well, it's a good start. Let me finish.

[Maisie grabs the sharp knife.]

Mommy, I want to slice.

No, it's sharp! I'LL do it.

Are you mad?

No, I am not mad, but I am trying to keep you safe.

Why do you sound mad?

I just want to do it. It's easier that way.

But why can’t I do it?

Because the knife is too sharp.

Why can't I use the sharp knife?

Because it's not safe for little girls.

Daddy! Where are you? Mommy, won't let me use the knife.

Is everything OK down there?

Daddy, are you coming? We made orange juice!

There you are. Can you come home at four so I can use the car?

Daddy, do you like your orange juice?

It's delicious. Did you make it?

I did. Mommy helped.

Melita is putting down roots in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and 3-year-old daughter.

Ghost in the house

By Melita

I've been working extra hard for months. Freelance life unspools over peaks and valleys. But over the past year, I've seen more peaks than valleys. Fear of valleys makes it difficult to say no. This keeps me busy. Sometimes, too busy.

Fortunately, my husband experienced a lull in his career as my work mounted. And he picked up the parenting slack. He's been reading the stories. Picking out the clothes. Preparing the meals. Far be it from me to complain. But last week, I began to feel like a ghost in the house. Things happened. Family fun was had. And I watched, with my mind on a million other things.

Recently, I returned home after one of many days of onsite freelance work in a poorly-lit cubicle warren, capped off with a 50-mile commute. My eyes burned. My head pounded. Dinner, a hot bath and my 3-year-old daughter all clamored for my attention.

"Where's my dollhouse?" Maisie asked me.

"Upstairs," I mumbled from the couch, with feet up, beer in hand and eyes only for the evening news. Without missing a beat, she called for my husband.

"Daddy, will you come play dollhouse with me? Mommy, you stay here and drink your beer."

Yikes. That hurt. It’s one thing to be part of a flexible family that bends gender roles to forge a new, more egalitarian style of parenting. But no -- I got busy and stepped right into the slippers of the remote father figure. The guy who buries his nose in the news as soon as he walks in the door after a long day of breadwinning.

Wearing his mantle is mighty comfortable. I needed a reminder that it's not quite my color.

Melita is putting down roots in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and 3-year-old daughter.

An out-of-book experience

By Melita

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
I've promised her sweets and a ride in the train,
And I've begged her to stop for a bit and explain --
What is the matter with Mary Jane?
--A. A. Milne

Around here, yeses are in short supply. Instead, shrieked NO!s ricochet from room to room. Wistfully I recall when Maisie first learned to talk. More banana? Yes, mama! A bath? Yes, mama! So delightful, so darned obliging. But, in September the clock struck three. Good-bye, social graces. Hello ... hellion.

To get anything accomplished, I resort to Oscar-the-Grouch logic. "Time to put your shoes on, Maisie. What a TERRIBLE way to start the day!" Or, "This soup is DISGUSTING ... go on, have a taste." The tactic works rather well. Even better, it keeps both of us smiling.

But, oh, the whining. The ear-splitting, nerve-jangling, brain-curdling, lifespan-shaving whining. Make it stop. I swear -- literally, figuratively and, at times, like a sailor (a very quiet, muttering sailor) -- some days, the first words out of Maisie's mouth are whiny ones. Those little eyes blink open, and she's already peeved about something. What gives? Please tell me it's her age.

One recent weekend, however, something was the matter with Maisie. She came down with a fever. She threw up. She had a nosebleed. She got a scratchy throat. She had many good reasons to be cranky, but mostly she was very sweet and cuddly. All that contrariness was at its lowest ebb in weeks.

Then one afternoon, at her request, I began reading to her from "The Complete Poems of Pooh." After reading the first few poems in the long book, Maisie said, "I want the one with the girl and the bed." I had not read from this book recently, so I had no idea what she was talking about. I flipped through the pages, until she pointed to an illustration of a girl huddled under a blanket. The poem was "Rice Pudding." I have quoted part of it above -- it describes a girl who remains fussy despite many attempts to make her happy. Another illustration accompanying the poem shows young Mary Jane angrily kicking off a shoe at the dinner table. (Rice pudding again.)

As you might imagine, this particular poem resonated with me. How amazing that it had captured my daughter's imagination, too. Rice pudding, all around!

Got any good tips for nipping whining in the bud?

Melita is putting down roots in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and 3-year-old daughter.

Drawing conclusions

By Melita

One morning recently, my husband called me shortly after dropping Maisie off at daycare. "Can Maisie draw a person?" he asked me. "I don't think so," I said. "Why?"

"Well, Charlotte and Jasper were already there when I dropped Maisie off. They were into some serious marker work, drawing families. We're talking full-fledged people with round heads, bodies, arms, legs. Fingers, even! I've never seen Maisie do more than scribble."

These kids are 3 years old, like Maisie. Jasper is closer to 4 -- yes, we expect great things from him -- but Charlotte is just a week older than she. The incident prompted a late-night discussion about how our slackerific parenting must be holding Maisie back from making stick figures. Sleepily, we vowed to do more drawing with her.

The next day, my husband chatted with Maisie's caregiver. Apparently, Charlotte has prodigious drawing skills. Not to worry, books are Maisie's special passion. Phew.

Last week, I was in a museum bookstore when a book called "Heidi's Horse" caught my eye. Compiled by an artist and educator named Sylvia Fein, it presents a chronological progression of drawings made by a single child from the ages of 2 to 17. It’s fascinating. At the age of 4, young Heidi started making a circle. From that point on she never scribbled again. She drew her first human figure at the age of 4 years, 2 months.

Another book by the same author, "First Drawings: Genesis of Visual Thinking," explores the way a child's artistic progression relates to the history of art. One chapter, "Meanders," pinpoints the moment when an exuberant scribble becomes something more purposeful, but not yet representative. She writes, "Children quickly understand that they can make a line obey, and express their comprehension by 'taking it for a walk,' unraveling the earlier scribbles." From what I can tell, this is exactly what Maisie is doing when she picks up a crayon these days.

Everything is connected. Precisely at the moment that my daughter is discovering how to test limits (and, at times, my patience) in her life as child, she is learning to impose order on her artistic creations. This makes perfect sense to me.

It's Maisie's time -- in art and in life -- to take those lines for a leisurely stroll, complete with detours and doubling back. As for me, I've got to avoid my own fretful attempts to pick up the pace.

Melita is putting down roots in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and 3-year-old daughter.

The brakes on the bus go...

By Melita

Over the weekend, my 3-year-old daughter and I set out to forage for material for her Halloween costume. As I drove, I heard her singing sweetly in the backseat. She launched her recital with "Wheels on the Bus." To my delight, she started making up verses once she got through all the standard ones -- the wipers, the driver, you know the drill.

"The squirrels on the bus say, 'Eat your nuts, eat your nuts, eat your nuts.' " Too cute!

Next up: "The boy on the bus says, 'Read a book, read a book, read a book.' " Give the little guy a gold star.

Would there be a girl in the song? What clever thing would she do? Peeking in the rear-view mirror, I held my breath. The next verse stabbed me: "The girl on the bus says, 'Watch a video, watch a video, watch a video.' " Oh yes, "projection" was the operative word here.

Until a few months ago, Maisie rarely watched TV or videos at home. I know she watched a little bit at daycare, and that seemed like plenty. Recently, however, I started picking up toilet-training videos at the library. Maisie seemed interested and began making progress on that front. After committing all the "Potty Power" songs to memory and fearing that commitment was in my own future, I started choosing other stuff, "Sesame Street" for the most part. My thinking: Use the videos to lure Maisie into spending quality time on the potty.

Can you guess what happened to my best-laid plans? Today, my daughter resists using the potty. But she has developed quite a taste for video entertainment. When the credits roll, she pleads, "Just. One. More. Time!" and wags one little finger at me. On some mornings, "Can I watch my video?" is the first thing out of her mouth. Yikes.

I have no problem with Maisie watching a short video each day -- if it were only that simple. But I have a big problem when thoughts of videos dance in her head all day long. I have a big problem with the guilt that washes over me when I let her watch a video twice in a row so I can get a little more work done.

So that's it. I am slamming the brakes on this particular bus. More time for looking at books, making up songs and using imagination. Hopefully, a little less time for whining and obsessing.

Have you found a happy medium with TV and/or video watching in your home?

Melita is putting down roots in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and 3-year-old daughter.

Homework

By Melita

Last night I met a woman at a neighborhood meeting, and we fell into an easy conversation. When she asked me whether I worked or stayed at home with my daughter, I explained that I am a writer, I work freelance, blah, blah, blah. Sometimes it's tricky explaining that I work at home, while my daughter goes to daycare for a sizable chunk of the workweek.

This woman didn't have any kids, so she was less interested in the daycare issue than she was in the mechanics of the freelance life. She asked, very intently, "Do you LIKE working at home?" A loaded question, but I couldn't guess where it was heading.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I love the flexibility. It’s a drag sitting in the same office all day.” Even at jobs I enjoyed, I started watching the clock in mid-afternoon, marking minutes as the day marched slowly to 5 p.m.

Later in the conversation, she circled back to her question, “I asked about working at home because I’ve had to do it at times for my job, and I hated it! I either couldn’t get started working or I couldn’t stop. I’d work off and on all day, then ask myself why, at 10 p.m., I could not relax.”

And suddenly there they were -- my work habits, in all their neurotic glory. The puttering. The procrastination. The scrambling to finish projects before breakfast or late at night. The passage of weeks without a single full day of rest. It’s true, I can never quite manage to close the book on my work.

This pace feels natural and real to me, though. Even more so, now that I am a mother. Being a parent means making peace with responsibilities I can't shake off when the clock strikes a certain hour. I can work with that.

Melita is putting down roots in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and 3-year-old daughter.

Back away from the mac and cheese

By Melita

My favorite food is macaroni and cheese. A quarter of a century ago, I would have said the exact same thing. OK, I would have said the same thing with a hint of a lisp.

Back then, I craved Kraft. That marigold sauce was always the brightest of many bright spots in my Saturday nights. My brother and I kept a close eye on our babysitter as she divvied up the pot. We practically counted the noodles to make sure no one came out ahead.

Now that I am a parent instead of a put-upon big sister, you might expect me to be more comfortable about sharing. More mature. Saintly, even. You would be disappointed.

Picture this pathetic and all too familiar scene. At Maisie's request, I make a box of shells -- natural white, but powdery all the same. I doctor it up with a little yogurt and a little grated cheese. After I devour my bowl, I start eyeing Maisie's portion. Maisie eats a few bites, then claims she's done and wanders away from the table. The second she steps away, I start sneaking bites from her bowl. Next thing you know, I polish it off.

Maisie returns to the table for her second course, same as the first. "Hey, where's my mac and cheese!" she cries. Sheepishly, I tell my sweet daughter, "I ate it. I thought you were done." As if on cue, my husband appears. "What happened to putting it in the fridge for later? You know she'll eat it eventually." I know, I know. Believe me, I know!

Not only have I failed my family, I am also uncomfortably full.

Pouncing on Maisie's mac and cheese while it is still warm is a special case. But I do own up to a generally bad habit of eating her table scraps. My mother used to insist that I eat everything on my plate. In a delayed reaction to the house rules of my youth, I let Maisie decide for herself when she is full. But for my part, I can't shake that ingrained fear of wasting food, that nagging feeling that plates must be clean at the end of a meal. Surely there is a better way to deal with this than turning myself into a human garbage disposal!

Melita is putting down roots in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and daughter (nearly 3).

Diaper madness

By Melita

I wish we had never stopped using cloth diapers for Maisie. Oh, how I miss those pure, snowy white diapers. They say that the all-cotton crowd toilet trains earlier than kiddies sporting chemically enhanced disposables. But that's not why I am second-guessing myself. OK, there's a soiled mound with Maisie's name on it in our local landfill. That bugs me, but even that isn't what has me feeling wistful about the days of rinsing stinky wraps in the bathroom sink.

Does anyone else find TV characters on diapers kind of creepy? Maisie, sweetie, it is one thing to enjoy Elmo. To each her own, I say. It is another thing altogether to obsess about having the furry little fellow cavort across your diapers. It's a problem, in fact, to freak out when you're saddled with Cookie Monster or Grover, instead of that squeaky little fuzzball.

Yes, yes, we have sampled those natural diapers that look like lunch bags -- leaky and expensive. We have substituted diapers with generic cartoon animals. Maisie just finds a new favorite to fixate on. She is, after all, two, going on picky, picky.

In this world of consumer choice, so rampant and so ridiculous, I take small comfort in the fact that no one has yet licensed the likenesses of the Desperate Housewives for use on maxi pads.

By the way: Mom, I hereby forgive you for resisting my childish pleas for Wonder Woman undies. That's all water -- or something like it -- under the bridge.

Melita is putting down roots in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and daughter (nearly 3).

Picking up the pieces

By Melita

"It looks like a chick bomb went off in here." In the German/Turkish film "Head On," a disheveled metalhead with a chaotic lifestyle makes this comment after his young female roommate treats his filthy apartment to a spit shine and some trendy new décor.

In my case, a baby bomb went off about three years ago, and it has taken that long to restore order at home. Let me back up -- it would be more accurate to say that our house was never very tidy, it got much worse after Maisie arrived, and it's only now that I am not mortified when someone stops by unexpectedly.

I am a pack rat, a proud daughter of pack rats, and a longtime defender of fellow pack rats. Almost a decade ago, I carted multiple boxes of magazines I will never read again from the east coast to the heartland, accompanied by my grade-school math tests and detritus from every trip I've ever taken. What can I say? It felt good at the time. Now that I'm settled, I have amassed enough yogurt containers to store all the leftovers this household could generate in a year, assuming that we'd want them stinking up the fridge.

Miraculously, in professional settings I kept my cubicles immaculate. (Granted, upon leaving, all those obsolete business cards and dead-letter files joined the treasure trove back at the ranch.) These days, I work at home. On my dining room table, to be precise. I am a copywriter. Let me tell you, being upbeat and creative is challenging when the first words that come to mind are expletives inspired by the toys you tripped on and papers you scattered on the way to fire up the laptop.

So, with the goal of improving my work life, I've been on a decluttering jag. Which has led inevitably to a cleaning jag. It's funny how clutter conveniently masks dust bunnies and grime. When we first moved into this house, it was spotless. The place had us fooled -- it seemed to clean itself for about a year. But it's been seven! And now we share it with a milk-spilling, Play-Doh-mashing, mirror-smearing machine. Until very recently, the phrase "spring cleaning" had a certain logic, but the true meaning of "housekeeping" was utterly lost on me. I'm learning that you have to keep at it. It's supposed to be a set of routine behaviors, not a frenzied, daylong decathlon before dinner guests arrive.

Yep, I am merrily clearing away the cobwebs -- mental and otherwise -- but a new problem has surfaced. For years, I have implicitly encouraged my naturally neat husband to embrace my messy, hoarding ways. I must say, he's gotten rather good at it. Too good. Let the re-programming begin!

Melita is putting down roots in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and daughter (nearly 3).