Unstuck

I have mentioned before how hard Blue and Green’s first years were. You know – the ENDLESS NONSTOP SCREAMING SCREAMING SCREAMING.


But perhaps I haven't told you as much about the tiny problem of the NO SLEEPING. And I have to say – all this time later, my body has still not quite recovered from all those YEARS of deprivation.

You are probably thinking to yourself, “Everybody has a tough time early on.” But let me tell you, this was different. I managed to get the two screaming babies that didn’t nap, that didn’t sleep at night. I was the mom at the playground swinging her kids at dawn. Michael was the dad going to the all night Starbucks drive-through. And our days were spent begging, pleading, bouncing, rocking, praying for 30 minutes of rest.

I remember going to the pediatrician's office, with a screaming butterball in each arm, and imploring the nurse to help us. I don’t know what I was thinking – this is the earthiest, no-antibiotic-prescribing doctor's office you could imagine -- but somehow I thought she’d pat me on the arm and give me a bottle of tranquilizers for the kids (or for me?). Instead, she smiled at me and said, “Have you tried the Baby Whisperer?”

I almost exploded. Of course we tried the whispering. We tried the crying-it-out and the crying-it-in. We tried having them sleep with us, in the car seat, on the couch. We tried songs and books and routines and the aforementioned begging. Nothing. No sleep.

And then, one evening, after TWO AND A HALF YEARS OF THIS, they fell asleep on the living room floor. And slept most of the night. And then the next day they took at nap at 9 and then another at 2. On the living room floor. So Michael and I lay down next to them and thanked our lucky stars for this gift.


Every night thereafter, those kids slept on the living room floor. And we didn’t mess with it, because HALLELUJAH they were sleeping. It didn’t matter that we no longer had access to the central space in the house. It didn’t matter that these were rather unorthodox arrangements. All that mattered was sleep.

Never fear, the kids now sleep in their own beds, usually all night long. But the consequences of that sleepless era are many. The most important consequence was the restriction that the lack-of-sleep placed on our sense of what was possible. And once they began to sleep like normal kids, we didn’t want to tinker with success. Naptime was sacred. Bedtime was inflexible. Frankly, we became inflexible.

I mention this now, because this has been the summer of big changes in our family. Maybe it’s the distance from those early years. Maybe it’s the boys’ increasing independence. But suddenly I have this drive to do all of the things we’ve been putting off in favor of rest.

First on my list was to take the boys camping. With such abundant natural beauty in our region, it’s a shame that we hadn’t taken them camping earlier. But, please – if there is ever the opportunity for a crappy night’s sleep, it’s while parked on the ground in a stuffy tent after a meal of burned marshmallows. This year, however, we had a new attitude: if they don’t get a good night’s sleep one night, they will make it up the next. Or perhaps more importantly, if WE don’t get a good night’s sleep one night, WE will make it up the next.

This is not to say that Michael and I did not go through our usual decision-making process before heading out to the wilderness. The conversation went something like this:

Michael: Do you think this is a good idea?

Me: It could be. But it could also ruin our lives.

Michael: What do you think is the worst thing that could happen?

Me: Well, it could rain, and the four of us would be jammed into the tent with nothing to do. And the boys would begin picking on each other, and we would start to scream at them and take away all of their allowance. And we WOULDN’T SLEEP AT ALL. Then we would go for weeks where everyone is crabby because they didn’t sleep on that one weekend. And then we would get swine flu, or bird flu, or bug flu, or whatever flu you get from not getting any sleep in the great outdoors.

Michael: Hmm. Anything besides that?

Since I couldn’t come up with any other dire predictions, we packed the car and headed out to experience our first camping adventure with the boys. We arrived, found our spot, unpacked our stuff, and held our breath. We fully anticipated Green to growl about not having access to his Wii. We fully anticipated Blue to turn to us with a bored expression and say, “What now?”

But you know what?

They loved it.

They loved the zippers on the tent. They loved the little paths that crisscrossed near our campsite. They loved the sticks and the stumps and the bugs and the bumps in the night. There was a small child somewhere in the campground that kept screaming, “I WANNA GO HOME! I WANNA GO HOME!” all night long. And the good news is….that child did not belong to us.

Tent:


Stump:


Spigot:


Gin:


The morning we were set to leave, we took a stroll along the beach at very low tide. It was the perfect family day – sun was shining, sand dollars and sea stars were littered everywhere, and we were all fairly rested. I was thinking to myself, “I think this trip has been a success. I can’t believe we accomplished this so easily.”


And then I fell into quicksand.

Yep. Quicksand.

I had never actually contemplated quicksand as a real phenomenon before. Isn’t it an Indiana Jones-ish idea? Something from cartoons? But no, there I was, sinking. It couldn’t be that I survived camping with my children just to die a slow, muddy death in Puget Sound. Could it?

Unfortunately, we were all a bit too alarmed by this event to think to snap a photo. But I looked something like this:

(photo from half-fast.org)

No, just kidding. Only my legs were submerged. But here’s the rub: if you are stuck in quicksand, and you manage to get one leg free, the only option you have is to put it back down in that very same quicksand as you attempt to free your other leg. And that sort of starts the process all over again.

Here’s the other bad thing that I discovered: if you get stuck in quicksand, no one can come over and help you, because they, too, will get stuck. So if, while you are sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss, your child comes running at you to show you the pieces of dead crab that he found (yuck), you have to scream bloody murder, “Don’t you dare come anywhere near me or you will be sucked into the center of the earth!” And you have to sound calm while you are screaming, so as not to worry him that YOU are being sucked into the center of the earth (even though you are).

It occurred to me that one of my biggest problems with the quicksand was that the muck had suctioned in my shoes. Perhaps, I figured, if I could free my feet from my shoes, I could extract myself from this dilemma. But then it dawned on me that I only had that one pair of shoes with me on the trip. As I wrestled with the problem of spending the rest of the day shoeless, Michael hollered at me to reach my arm down into the mud and free my feet. “Do it!” he shouted. “Stop thinking about it.”

“First of all, “ I said to him, “I never stop thinking. Some people even pay me to think. I am a thinker. Second, if I reach my arm into the mud, I’ll get all disgusting.”

He said, “You are already disgusting. You’ve been camping.”

That was a good point. It was also good that I am somewhat limber, because reaching arm-deep into quicksand while staying upright is quite a feat. But I did it, and I even managed to get the shoe out and toss it up the bank. Then I jogged on one leg a bit, trying to prevent further sinkage, while I freed the other foot.

Phew.

So what’s the moral of this story? Don’t get so blinded by your own success that you fail to notice the steaming pile of quicksand at your feet? Always pack an extra set of shoes, because you never know when yours will be swallowed up by nature? Do your yoga so that you can be prepared to balance on one muddy hand?

All of those things are true. But I got to thinking that maybe it’s simpler than that: whatever problem we have, we probably will not sink all the way down. We will get out eventually.

(Note to pediatrician: Even though we no longer have sleep problems, I’d still like a tranquilizer or two for those rough days. Like when Green calls Blue a buttburger, and Blue hits him in the face with a Wii remote. That kind of thing.)