Anyone know of any? With the day I’m having (and it’s only 9:30 in the morning) I’ve forgotten what they were. To start, my five-month-old, Joshua, is a mess. He has some mystery belly issue we can’t solve. Specialists, medications, formula changes. He’s in pain, he can’t digest, and he doesn’t sleep. He has been up hourly for the past two days, much more than his usual every three hours.
We put him in the Pack n’ Play next to our bed, since having to walk to his room every hour takes away precious minutes of sleep. I’m up with him all night. He’s arching and crying and I can feel his stomach churning. I rock, I burp, I cry.
Bless my husband, he gets up at 5 a.m. to take him out of the room. He leaves for work at 8 a.m. so the idea is that I can catch a straight three before he has to go. He offers nightly to take Josh in the guest room so I can have a full night, but I always decline. He wakes with them each weekend and I sleep until noon, so I do my best to hold out until then.
For all of his good intentions, sleep is fleeting. Maybe an hour passes and our first born, Jacob, rises. I swear, it’s the weather. Thank goodness I’m in the sunny south. Every cloudy rainy day we have turns Jake into Frankenstein’s Monster.
He emerges from his room already screaming. Daddy. He wants daddy. Daddy isn’t upstairs? Unacceptable. He screams for daddy to come upstairs. SCREAMS. Poor Ryan, all he wants is for me to sleep. He has the baby in one arm, and is desperately trying to quiet Jake and urge him downstairs. Of course, this happens outside my room so I’m both feeling angry and guilty.
Some time passes and I must have slept, because the next thing I know, I hear Jake screaming and my door opening. Ryan apologizes and puts Josh in the crib next to me, saying he can’t wait any longer; he has to get to work. I have him give me Jake and I then have to hold him next to me so Ryan can leave. Jake breaks free and runs after him.
I get up, check the baby, and head downstairs. Beautiful. At just three years old, Jake has mastered both the child safety door lock AND our garage door opener. Both doors are open and he is screaming. I can’t even fathom how he did that. The garage opener is about five feet up and my own sister couldn’t figure the child lock out.
