Monster Cookies

Tonight

Author: Amber

Tonight has been one bittersweet evening.

One child is spending the night hanging out with his grandparents, so I’m down to three here. Jon is working so it was a pretty quiet evening with a perogy dinner and some cupcakes, cheese and crackers and a movie to round it all off.

Sweet, right?

Then bedtime happened.

Bedtime has generally not been a problem for us here. Jon has worked evening shifts since before Andrew was born and that forced me to get everyone into a bedtime routine for my own sanity. I need them to go to bed so that I can have time to myself, and I need it to go quickly, easily and as painlessly as possible. By the time bedtime rolls around, my patience is wearing thin.

Tonight was not a typical night. It was not a nice, sweet bedtime routine night. It was horrible. A chain of unfortunate events that looped back and connected itself into one big stressful circle.

You want to know how it went, right? No worries, this is one I need to get down in words so that one day when, say, Andrew is a father and he is having bedtime routine battles, I can pull it out for his reading enjoyment.

It all started with a snack. They got one. They don’t always, but since there are only 3 here, it’s a Friday, its a special night and I was feeling generous, I pulled out the crackers and cheese and let them chow down before sending them upstairs to get into their jammies.

Joshua, always the one to obey (and quickly!) did as he was told. He and Andrew had headed upstairs while I wiped Claire off and got her out of her high chair. When I arrived in the kids’ room, Josh was dressed in his Spiderman jammies picking some tunes, while Andrew was digging through his drawer searching for his own Spiderman jammies to match his big brother. Adorable.

I helped him pull them out and went to work getting Claire ready for bed. Her diaper came off and she insisted that she had to pee, so I sent her to the bathroom while I pulled some jammies out of her drawer. I went to the bathroom to help her out and found her walking in a puddle of her own urine, pushing her potty around the room. Darn that I wasn’t there just a few seconds sooner!

I cleaned up and headed back into the bedroom where Andrew still was playing around and not putting on his pajamas and gave him a 4 minute warning, that if his pajamas were not on by then, he would lose his story.

Well, wouldn’t you know it? He was still half naked and fooling around after those four minutes had passed. I told him that he had lost his choice of story but he could still listen to Josh’s if he would just hurry up and get those pajamas on.

He decided he’d rather throw a step stool at me.

Guess who went to bed half naked and didn’t get to hear any stories at all?

I lifted him up and tucked him into his bed where he screamed until he fell asleep.

This is where it gets really fun!

After Josh and Claire enjoyed a story time and brushed their teeth, I tucked them into their own beds. Claire didn’t want to be there, so she started crying, which woke up Andrew enough that he started crying again, which made Josh turn up their music loud so he could hear it, which made Jon angry because he is working tonight and the people calling him could hear the music, which then brought him out of his office to turn down the music. On his way to the kids’ room, Jon met Andrew, finally dressed up like a cute little Spiderman, who said he needed a drink of water.

Jon said no and took Andrew to bed on his way to turn down the music, which made Andrew start howling again, which then woke up Claire, who started crying as well.

Oh. My. Goodness.

These are the nights that I have prayers for patience, wishes for obedient children, and dreams of a home where they can each have their own room.

I don’t want to wish away their childhoods in the least, but to glimpse into the future to a time where they know it is wrong to throw things, where they know it is just easier to make Mommy happy, where they actually like to go to sleep…ah, those glimpses are beautiful to me on nights like tonight.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 8:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.