4:12am. That’s the
time the clock read when my bleary eyes finally focused on it after I had heard
Cal shuffle into our room and felt his finger poking me gently in the arm. 4:12am.
I think that’s one of the worst times to be awakened by your kid – it’s
way too early to get up for the day but way too late to fall back into any
semblance of a quality sleep.
At least he’s gentle and quiet about it. Perhaps he really does realize the spot he’s
putting me in – disrupting the sleep I so desperately need in order to help him
get back to the sleep he should get.
If we exchanged any words at 4:12am, I couldn’t tell you what they
were. I hauled myself out of bed and
followed him to his room, hopeful that I wouldn’t find what I knew was a
distinct possibility. 4:12am was a good
8-1/2 hours after we got him into bed, and who knows how long after he had last
gone potty. I insisted he try to go
potty right before bed, which he did and squeezed out one drop. “I can’t do it,” he said repeatedly. I still made him try and made him try again after
I saw the single drop come out. One last
“I can’t do it,” and “we” gave up.
Anyway, back in his room just after 4:12am, Cal started to
crawl back into his bed when I stopped him with my hand on his shoulder. “Wait,” I said and then brushed my hand over
his sheet. It was wet.
I turned to him and said, “we have to take your jammies off,”
and the proceeded to help him do so. I
threw an Underjam on him and told him, “okay, go crawl into Mommy’s bed.” And then off he scurried, no questions asked,
no complaints lodged.
I pulled the sheets off of his bed, wiped down the vinyl
mattress cover where I had felt the pee and then grabbed another set of sheets and
blanket from his closet. I used to keep
them in the hallway closet, a few steps outside of Cal’s room. If I’ve learned anything, convenience is
important to survival – having them in his closet saved me a few steps and
mitigated the risk of waking our sleeping Ella.
Sheets back on, I grabbed a pajama top from Cal’s dresser
and then headed back to my room to get Cal.
“Cal,” I whispered from the door to my room. I couldn’t see much of anything, but I did
hear the familiar shuffle of his feet across my room toward me.
Like a basketball hoop waiting for the arrival of a basketball, I was waiting at the door with his shirt ready to plop over his
head. When he reached me, I steered the
shirt over his head, and he then followed suit by slipping his arms in the
armholes. We exchanged no words. It was remarkable, really, just really well
orchestrated as if we had hours of practice behind us.
Cal then shuffled himself back to his room and clumsily
tried to hoist himself back into bed. It
really is a tall bed, so I helped him and then pulled the sheet and blanket
over him.
“I want a different stuffed animal, please,” he
announced. I looked down and saw Walter
(his wolf and initial bed partner) lying on the floor amongst many others.
“Who do you want?” I asked.
“Foxy.” I looked down
and fortunately saw the familiar red tail of foxy sticking out from under the
bed, grabbed him and then placed him under Cal’s arm.
Cal proceeded to suck his thumb, something we’ve been all
over him to stop. But I didn’t stop him.
At about 4:25am now, I just wanted to get back to try to salvage what I could
of the rest of my slumber. With the alarm
set for 5:03am, I didn’t have much time to do so.
Looking back, I am amazed at Cal’s full cooperation. Rarely do we have together time when he’s not
saying “no” to the simplest of requests or when he’s not flat out ignoring
me. Bless his heart, I think that deep
inside, the kid just needed some help from his mommy and wanted to help his
mommy help him however he could.
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