Curse My Optimistic Soul. And Big Kid Beds. Curse Those Too.

Awwww aren’t they sweet?? No. This is mere minutes before their adorable little heads spun off.

Thump.  Pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter.  “Hi Mommy!”

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

Take any woman comfortably reclining on the couch, holding (cradling) her remote control and her glass (bottle) of wine while refusing to make eye contact with the pile of laundry sitting beside her.  Throw that above scenario at her.  And I guarantee you that you will have weeping.  And wailing. And rubbing of ashes on face.

Because she knows.  SHE KNOWS.  It’s the end of an era.

Trapezoid is climbing out of his crib.  I don’t know why he waited so long, he certainly could have done it waaaaay before now.  I’m surprised he didn’t climb out of his hospital nursery bassinet right after he was born but he was probably too weighed down by the sheer amount of newborn hair covering his body.  (He was a seriously hairy child.  Seriously.)

Can’t…lift…head…forehead…too…hairy…

But he didn’t.  And anytime I caught him with a leg hitched over the side of the crib I would unleash a campaign of shock and awe…”GASP!  OH GOODNESS NO!  BABIES DON’T CLIMB OUT OF THEIR CRIBS! WE NEVER EVER CLIMB OUT OF OUR CRIB!” (The key is to deliver that sentence with your hands on your cheeks in a very Home Alone type of way.)  And this worked. FOR A YEAR.  Because what baby wants to upset that crazy lady slapping herself in the face?

He liked his crib.  He loved his crib.  Some morning he would wake up and laze in there for an hour or so, just reading books and playing with toys.  His crib looked like it had been pulled from an episode of Hoarders.  I would sneak in every night after he had fallen asleep and pull out the books from underneath him, unclench the toy trains and adventure people from his hands and remove 3 of the 6 blankets he insisted on having piled on top of him every night.  We had a thing, Trap and I did.  A rhythm.  An unspoken agreement.  I put you into your Baby Hoarders crib and you stay there until morning.  Capiche, Trap?  Catfish, Mommy.

Thump.  Pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter.  The end of an era.

But that’s cool.  I’m hip. I’m with it.  And more importantly, this isn’t my first rodeo.  I already have a child that I transitioned to a big kid bed with ZERO problems.  That had nothing to do with the personality of that child, it was all as a result of my excellent parenting skills.

I’ll allow that to sink in.  And now I’ll pause for a moment so you can go and change your pants because surely you’ve peed yourself with laughter.  Or at the very least you’ve called a friend to tell them about some idiot you’ve discovered.  Yeah, yeah, yeah…have a good pee/chuckle.  I don’t mind.

I don’t know why the differences in my children continue to amaze me but they do.  For some reason I thought, “Hmmm…Hub’s ‘A’.  I’m ‘B’.  So Child 1 will be ‘C’ and Child 2 will be ‘Cv.2’.  Or maybe ‘D’.  Uhhh duh.  First of all, dummy (me, not you) that’s not how it works.  Realistically, Hubs is ‘T’, I’m ‘L56’, Oldest is ‘Purple’ and Youngest is a ‘Trapezoid’.  Nature vs. Nurture aside, we’re just born who we are.  Purple is a thoughtful kid who worries too much about pleasing while Trapezoid secretly dreams jumping off of the roof while holding an umbrella.

(Someone out there just rolled their eyes because I ‘labeled’ my kids but maaaaan…sometimes you just KNOW, you know? And if they turn out to prove me wrong one day, they can use it as the first chapter in their duo-autobiography about their terrible mother and I swear I won’t say a thing. Not like they EVER call me anyways…)

Flash forward 2 years and Trapezoid is ready to make the change.  We make a decision.  We’ll employ the same methods that we used with Purple.  I trek up to Ikea (by myself!) to buy a matching bed and a bookcase (cough cough *separater* cough cough) to put in between them.  The beds and case fit within an inch in the space.  We even catch a Groupon for an amazing mattress deal an hour before it expires.  Trap and Daddy build the bed together.  Trap is excited!  He gets IT! Purple and I get out of the house while they do that and have an amazing Mommy/Purple afternoon.  Purple almost swallows a Lego! He doesn’t get IT!

Suuuure kid…Legos and french fries look EXACTLY alike…

It’s bedtime!  It’s EXCITING!  Isn’t everyone excited!?  New pjs!  New sheets!  Mommy reads to Purple in his bed and Daddy reads to Trap in his bed and it’s GREAT! Right?!  It’s great? Right?  It’s great.  It is.  For 20 minutes.  The 20 minutes it takes to upload the adorable pic of the boys in their room onto Facebook and have a little sad moment that I’ll never again lift a sleepy morning boy out of his crib and we’re never having anymore children and oh my gosh is that a mistake?! and Kyle should we have had 3? and geez don’t look at me like that I’m just TALKING geez! and…

Creeeeeaaaaak.

“Mommy.  I have to pee.”  It’s the big kid.  Okay.  No problem.  I can handle this.  Go pee.

Oh Trapezoid wants to pee too?  How adorable!  Purple finishes.  Put on little seat for Trap.  Take off pajama bottoms and diaper.  Hoist 38 pounds onto the potty.  He pees.  Yay!  Good for you! We all cheer! (Which in hindsight was pretty stupid.)

Diaper back on. PJs bottoms back on.  Don’t worry about washing hands, there are no germs this late at night (don’t judge me).  Both back into bed.  Smooth up covers.  Kisses.  Hugs.  No Trap, you can’t sleep with Purple. No Trap, you can’t sleep with Purple. No Trap, you can’t sleep with Purple.  Oh gracious, can he please just sleep in your bed with you??  No Trap, you can’t sleep with Purple.  Okay…everybody is settled aaaaand goodnight.

Leave room feeling good but with a slight feeling of unease.  Which was justified.  3 more times over the next 5 minutes.  Purple needs to pee.  Trapezoid follows.  Trapezoid wants to pee.  Diaper/pants off.  Pee. Diaper/pants on. No germs. Blankets, kisses/hugs, stay in your bed, Trap…stay in your bed, Trap…stay in your bed, Trap.

Time 5.

Mommy gets upset.  And that’s when it all goes straight to hell.  No.  Not hell.  Walmart on a Friday at 5pm.  A bad neighborhood Walmart.

Purple loses it.  I’ve scared him.  I’m not a yeller mom so when I raise my voice he retreats.  And by raise my voice I mean I’ve said, “I do NOT want you 2 out of bed one. more. time.”

“But I have to peeeeeee!” he wails.  “Traaaaapezoooid keeps making me drink his waaaahaaaaahaaaater!” Water that has apparently broken all rules of time/space/gravity and or digestive laws and made it from his mouth to his bladder in 3.2 seconds.

So of course I feel bad.  And flash forward to an image of him 20 years in the future, unable to pee unless someone hums ‘Singin’ In The Rain’ while he squeezes his eyes shut and pictures homeless armadillos.  Or something like that.

“Of COURSE you can pee!  Mommy is so proud of you when you get up to potty!  There’s no such thing as a homeless armadillo!”  All while crowbarring Trap out of the bathroom and back into his room where he sends up a cry to the gods of toddlers that exact revenge on mothers who don’t let their non-potty trained, diaper wearing 2 year olds pee 56 times in 4 minutes.

Purple is inconsolable.  Dry heaving.  Spastic breathing.  Apologizing for not being able to stop (as if I didn’t feel like a complete asshat before that).  I sit on the edge of his bed and we do some deep breathing together but it’s ‘nuuuuuhooooot wu-wu-wu-wu-wu-oooorking Mommy!’ We try more and more and more but it gets worse and more panicky.  WHAT IS GOING ON!  I mean, I know.  Big day.  Little brother unleashed. Huge changes.  Scary.  He needs a mommy filled with kindness!  Empathy!  Love!   So what do I say?  The most empathic thing ever uttered by a mother.  Ever.

“Purple.  If you cannot calm yourself down…I will…I will…not let you play with your new Legos tomorrow!”

What. The. Hell. Is. The. Matter. With. Me.

I’ll tell you what’s the matter.  I’m tired. I had plans to go to sleep when they did.  And I’ve been dealing with 2 urinating, hyperventilating children for an hour.

So they totally calm down and go to sleep.  The End.

Call your friend again, dummy is back.

That didn’t happen.  What DID happen was I had a 4 year old so worked up that he ended up on his knees in front of the toilet.  Dry heaving.  I’m certain there is a time in my life that I’ve felt worse but I certainly couldn’t tell you what it was.

The story does get better.  I gave him some Bach Flower Rescue Remedy drops, cuddled him on the edge of the bathtub and sang him some lullabies.  I felt his breathing return to normal.  His lanky little body relax.  Trap stayed in his bed.  I carried Purple back to his.  They both fell to sleep immediately.  Bedtime started at 9 and was officially over at 10:45.

I came out and wrote this post.  I didn’t want to.  It’s kind of embarrassing.  But I felt like Purple and Trapezoid deserved it.

Besides…I wanted to tell my side of the story before their book comes out 😉

Sleep until 10 or Santa dies.