Friday, Saturday and Everything In Between

Friday Evy was over and we went skating with some of the moms from our moms' group. After that we headed to one of the local libraries to pick up a book I had requested. Let me just interject here to rave about the library system. I don't know if it is like this all over, but I get the sense that ours is special. There's 29 libraries in the 'system' and you can request anything you want, from any of those libraries, and they will send it to the library of your choosing just as soon as they can. All you have to do is go to the library website and request the item(s) from the comfort of your own home. Then they'll tell you when it's in and you've got 7 days to get there before they send it back. Books, movies, cd's, anything...and it's totally free - barring the oh-so-familiar late fee which I actually don't mind paying, as I often have to do. I kind of feel like I owe them something, plus it makes me feel a little safer in the knowledge that this library thing is not a dream (you know, like it's too good to be true). You'd think that I'd just made this discovery by my joy but I have known about it for a long time. I just can't get over it.

Anyway, we picked up our book and then headed into the kids' room to get a video for Jacob. We are frequent visitors to the kids room, but I had not before seen the Train Table (capitalized to emphasize the importance train tables have in our lives). I could not refuse Jacob play time with the Train Table so I settled on the floor with Evy and the snack I smuggled in for her. Partway through his play, Jacob paused to ask me, "Can we get a Train Table?"
"Maybe someday soon (I already have one and it's what he's getting for Christmas)."
"Ohh, I weally want a Train Table."
"I know you do sweetie, and I want you to be able to have one."
"Maybe Nana will get us one!"

I love how it's 'us'. One for us to share. Even though I complain a lot that we never get to do stuff as a family, I'm realizing that we really do squeeze quite a bit of family time into our busy lives. It might not be the regular kinds of things that other people do like going out to dinner, or going to the big show at the arena, but there's a lot of random, everyday things that all 3 of us do together. I guess that's what attachment parenting looks like to us; we take for granted that there are some things we just all do as a family. In the beginning it was important for me to have the label 'attachment parenting'. Now it has just morphed into 'the way we do things' and I love that that is apparent in Jacob's emerging language.

So, it's getting increasing harder for me to hold out on the Train Table. I think I'm afraid that Jacob will get to the point of wanting one so badly that he will reach the peak of that mountain of desire and then start to climb back down the other side. I especially feel that way about the dollhouse he has also been lusting over. It's great that Jacob wants this, I want to nurture that side of him before he realizes that's not the way he's 'supposed' to feel about dollhouses and the like. I think it's terrible that this natural instinct of his will soon be lost to culturization. I am looking at a catalogue that arrived by mail recently and there is a very gender neutral dollhouse on page 12. I think this could be the one, however, in the upper-right corner of the picture is this: "She'll treasure her first dollhouse forever!" And I want to strangle someone at that company instead.

So here I have conflicting values: The anti-gender radical in me wants to go out and get a dollhouse before it's too late, but the anti-consumption puritan in me says, "Nooo, one big gift at a time." What to do?

A little while longer at the train table and I started to smell the 'stench'. No, not Jacob this time, woohoo! I had not brought any diapers in for Evy because we were only going to be in and out, so we all had to get dressed back in our coats/mittens/hats and haul it out to the car for wipes and a diaper. I wanted to let Jacob play more and Evy was having a good time too so we went back in for a potty break and diaper change. Here I'll pause to rant: What had happened to the friggin 'reach in' wipes? You're not going to have any idea what this is unless you are a parent and as nit-picky as I**. You've got the wipes containers with the itty-bitty holes for the 'one-ups' (these are real words), and the 'one-ups' themselves which are stuck together but pry apart when squeezed through the hole. And you've got the regular container that is just open for which you need the kind of wipes that are not interfolded (reach-ins), right? For almost a year I have not been able to find reach-ins anywhere. All my wipes containers are for reach-ins. I'm not getting new ones because of some marketing sceme to phase out the corresponding wipes so I'll have to spend more money on new containers. Do you know what happens when you put one-ups wipes into a reach-ins container? They all come out as one long string of baby wipe. And when you are holding tight to a squirming baby on a high changing table, trying to keep your 3 year-old in the bathroom with your one foot and balancing on the other, you really just want ONE WIPE to come out of the container, not the ENTIRE package.

Later that night I was the first person in the house to get into bed. I can count on 1 hand the number of times that has happened. It was very nice for 5 minutes. Then Jacob came up, which was still nice because he was in an affable mood and willing to snuggle. The Zach came up and I am being truthful in saying that he was asleep before his head hit the pillow. For as long as I have known him he has been like this. It is like magic to me because I do not know how to sleep. For my entire life I just categorized myself as a 'difficult sleeper' because it's something that doesn't come easily to me. Now that I see Jacob going through the same thing, and I hear conflicting advice, some being that a child needs to be 'taught' to sleep, I realize I just don't know how, plain and simple. It was 11pm when we all got into bed the other night. Jacob and I did not fall asleep til 2am. I know for myself, and am starting to think is true with Jacob, I can only fall asleep if I am exhausted beyond my ability to stay awake. I think this is part of the reason why I stay up til ungodly hours on the computer. Going to bed is a painful experience because I know it's not going to yield anything; I will lay there for hours waiting for sleep to overtake me, begging it to come, when all that really happens is I think about death. That, mixed with my increasing panic about how tired I'm going to be the next day and my resentment toward Zach for being one of the 'chosen' who have been given the secret to sleep, only makes me more awake. So instead of going through that every night I just sit here at the computer and waste time til my face hits the keyboard.

Zach and I have this fight we repeat anytime Jacob needs something in the middle of the night. Jacob wants something so I kick Zach awake (I know it sounds mean but there is no volume loud enough to draw him out of the level of sleep he's in - kicking is the only thing that works) and ask him to get it. He gets all pissed off to have been woken and wants me to go get it because I'm the one who was already awake. I tell him the fact that I'm still awake is the exact reason that he should go get it. It's probably taken me half an hour to zen myself to the stage of relaxation I'm in and one quick trip downstairs is going to kill that calm. Since it is so easy for him to go back to sleep he should get it. Zach thinks I am just bull-shitting him and I just don't want to get out of bed. It has nothing to do with that, I'm being honest when I say it'll wake me up. He's the one who just doesn't want to leave the warm comfort of slumberland.

I suppose that's more than enough rambling for the night...stay tuned for tomorrow's episode which will cover how I've been taken over to the dark side by the men in my house, our trip to the mall, and most likely something about Bob.

ETA
** Or you are an extremely observant bachelor who has dated a girl with small children and taken exceptional care of said children.