I’m in my office, writing. Got MacFreedom turned on for 30-minute writing sprints and I’m working hard. Plugged in. Getting good stuff down on the page. Billy and the kids are asleep upstairs. I can hear Billy and Kiddo snoring on the baby monitor. Then a cough followed by the shifty papery sound that means someone’s moving around in bed and I hold my breath and hold real still but magical thinking doesn’t transmit well through baby monitors so of course the baby wakes up, fussing and wanting to be nursed back down.
I go upstairs and find Billy has actually woken up and is trying to soothe her back down. Good man! But it’s not working, probably because he somehow failed to detect the telltale smell of a poopy diaper. I take her, bring her to the changing table, get to work. She’s unhappy now, because when she saw me she expected we’d lie down and she’d have some nice milk and drift off to sleep in five minutes or so, as usual. Instead she’s on the changing table and even though the lights are dimmed, they can never really be dimmed enough when you’re on your back staring up at the ceiling after you’ve been asleep, right? And it’s all cold on your skin where your pajamas have been unsnapped, and that mom lady is wiping your butt with cold tushie wipes, and it’s just all so very, very unfair because all you wanted was to cuddle with the mama and get some nice milk and go back to sleep.
So yeah…she’s crying now. And then she pees all over the changing table. So I pick her up because I’m not the sort to leave a kid lying in her own pee and I thought she was done but…she pees all over me. Soaks me through three layers to the skin. Lovely. Billy gets out of bed and gets a clean diaper on her while I strip off my peed-on clothes and now she’s really, really mad because she’s been handed off to the second-stringer when she had expressed a very clear preference for the mama and where IS that milk already and why is she not in bed yet?
Finally we get into bed and since she’s all worked up it takes thirty minutes of precious, precious writing time to get her back to sleep.
But asleep she is. And it’s only midnight. Sleep is for the weak. Back to MacFreedom I go.
Well, Tolstoy’s writing would have been the richer for it, just as yours is/will now be — but oy. But you got it written down! Now it’s notes, instead of interruption, rich compost for a book down the line when the kids are autonomous and you’ve got time … and sleep.
Still, I gotta say it does help reconcile a person to being, let’s say, post-menopausal. Sweet, sweet sleep.
In the order I read your posts this morning —-
1 – congrats on extra writing time, hope the furry one returns soon. My cats were both the indoor/outdoor variety, and there are a few worries along the way.
2 – Yippee!
3 – Life is sure hard to explain to a little one! Congrats on a hubby who is up and helping. Maybe this will be one of those cute stories you’ll tell when being interviewed on TV after your book(s) hit the best seller list (again!).
Ah, but did she wake up the big one? Last night I spent an hour rocking the baby because the boobs were empty and sore, I couldn’t get to the kitchen to make a juice and I didn’t want him to scream and wake the 4-year old. Good times.
In a word, Oy.