Category: Hubster

Babies cease to be cute after three days of sleep deprivation. Same goes for husbands.

I’m not gonna lie. There are times late at night when I’m struggling to get Sam to sleep that I look over at my comatose husband and I want to throw something at him. I actually did throw something at him once when Cassie was a baby. I was up nursing for the ninth time that night and Michael was snoring in bed. He was snoring very loudly, so loudly that I couldn’t even doze while sitting in the glider, which to me seemed way too unfair. So I picked up the book sitting on the table next to me and I threw it at him. Hit him too, with a nice big satisfying thunk. He gave a big snort and a grunt, sat up looking very surprised, and then groaned when I ordered him to roll over and quit snoring. Fortunately for both of us, he had the sense of mind not to complain about having his sleep interrupted, because I had plenty more books within arms reach.

I was able to refrain from repeating the book throwing episode last night, although it was hard to do. I don’t know if Sam’s going through a growth spurt or if we’re just dealing with more problems related to her lactose overload, but she’s done nothing but feed and fuss for the past three nights. Last night I tried to wear her out before putting her down. I strapped on the front carrier and walked around the house with her for over an hour, grabbing a piece of laundry and folding it each time I passed by the dryer. I got two loads put away by the time Sam finally dozed off, and I thought I was home free. Then I put her in her bouncy chair to sleep and she immediately woke up.

Why am I putting this kid in a bouncy chair to sleep, you might ask? Because Sam won’t sleep lying flat on her back. I can get her to sleep on her side, and every time I put her on the floor for tummy time, she falls asleep on her belly with no problem (a fact which bothers the crap out of me, thanks to the SIDS On-Your-Back campaign). But try putting Sam down flat on her back and she howls. So for night times and naps, I’ve resorted to putting her in the bouncy chair, where she can sleep sitting propped up. Not as comfortable for her as tummy time apparently, but she can usually deal with it.

Last night though, I couldn’t get her in buckled into the stupid bouncy chair. The little straps went and hid under her butt, and by the time I managed to fish them out, Sam was awake again and fussing. I was out of ideas and at the end of my rope so Michael picked her up and rocked her for a while. Fed up with the bouncy chair, I went downstairs and grabbed the car seat to put Sam in once she fell back asleep. It would be easier to put her in the car seat I decided, since she could rest in it without needing to be strapped in. Then I crawled into bed and listened to Michael rock Sam. He got her to sleep after half an hour or so. And then my husband the genius put our fussy child in her bassinet flat on her back.

Now I told Michael I had brought up the car seat. I put it where we normally put the bouncy chair. He walked past it twice, had to step over it even, so I know he knew it was there. And yet he decided to ignore it and put Sam down in a position he knows she hates. I couldn’t believe it. Sam stayed asleep for a minute after being laid on her back. Then she started to grunt and hyperventilate. Pretty soon, she was thrashing around and screaming.

“Why did you put her flat on her back?” I demanded as I got up to calm my squalling infant.

“She has to sleep on her back sometime,” he mumbled, already half asleep.

“Michael, we’ve had two sleepless nights in a row. Tonight was not the night to experiment!”

He just shrugged and rolled over. I looked for something to throw at him.

It took me another half hour to get Sam settled and down to sleep. From midnight until 4 AM, she snoozed peacefully in her car seat. During those same hours, I dreamt over and over of divorcing Michael. The dreams were pretty vivid too. I imagined packing up everything I owned, taking the kids and driving off to some imaginary land where no husbands existed. It was a peaceful place where people communicated and actually tried to understand each other. Nobody did anything dumb like shop at Sam’s Club and bring home one hundred rolls of toilet paper when all you needed and had room for was four (“But honey, we saved two cents a roll!”). Nobody turned off the lights while you were still in a room trying to clean up the mess they left behind. And nobody plopped down on top of the pile of clean, freshly folded laundry sitting in the middle of the bed to take a nap. People actually thought first before doing things, and thus a lot of mistakes and homicides were avoided.

Then I dreamt that my computer broke down and I woke up in a cold sweat. I thought about my laptop and my desktop, my scanner and my Wacom digital tablets, my wireless network and my cable modem. I realized that no matter how many dumb things he might do, I needed Michael. Because truth be told, you can’t buy good tech support these days. You have to sleep with it.

Assuming the baby lets you sleep, of course.

In spite of my bad attitude yesterday, our thirteenth wedding anniversary came off pretty well. It wasn’t the romantic, blissful day I would have wished for, but considering we spent it with a preschooler and a nursing infant in tow, it wasn’t bad.

We started the day off with a trip to the pediatrician. Sam weighs over eight pounds now, and the doctor says she’s gained so much weight so quickly that I can slow down on the breastfeeding, maybe stretch it out to three hours between feedings. Thank god for that, because sitting down every two hours to feed this little monster was just about killing me. After leaving the doctor’s office, Michael and I debated where we should go and what we should do. Honestly, I didn’t want to do anything but sleep, but Cassie needed some time out and someone (me) foolishly proposed taking her to the beach, so that’s where we decided to go.

Yorktown Beach is a nice little beach along the York River, with a series of shops and a boardwalk that were recently constructed there. I didn’t get to do any shopping (way too tired to even contemplate it) but I did get to sit in the sun and relax while Michael chased after Cassie. We had a picnic lunch, courtesy of our local Subway, and I was able to let Sam snooze in her little tent while the rest of us roasted in the sun. After about two hours, we were all hot, sweaty, sticky and coated in a fine mixture of sand and sun block. And because we weren’t messy enough, we decided to have ice cream on top of that. Cassie, needless to say, was absolutely filthy by the time we left, but she was happy and dancing and she fell asleep in the car on the way home and that’s really what mattered most.

So after a day of running around and sweating to death, my bad attitude finally burned itself off. With both kids asleep, I collapsed in the chair for a bit, pulled up the ol’ laptop and did some writing. I even got a little drawing done. Michael disappeared to his office for a couple of hours, and I got the peace and quiet I needed so badly the past few days.

In addition to being our wedding anniversary, yesterday was also Michael’s last day home on family leave. He heads back into the office today after more than two weeks off, leaving me to finally fend for myself with both kids. I am going to miss him, sort of, although I will get to see him around lunch. At least this time around, I’m not absolutely terrified of being left alone with a baby. I’m much better prepared, I hope, to cope on my own. And being on my own now gives me time to think about why I’m married to a man who yesterday was about to drive me crazy. Here’s the list of reasons I came up with.

1) He gives great tech support. True, it takes at least two remotes to turn on our computer/TV hybrid, and up to five remotes if you want to change the channel, but when a computer goes down in our house, you can guarantee that Michael will be able to fix it and probably improve it better than any dork you could hire.

2) He cooks, he cleans (sort of), he does yard work. Michael does all those chores that I either don’t have time to do or just flat out hate doing. I never really did learn how to cook, so we’d starve if he didn’t fix most of our meals. And the yard would look like a jungle if he didn’t mow it down every week, cause I can’t stand doing yard work. As for the cleaning… well, two out of three ain’t bad, and I have to do something in this marriage aside from herding the kids.

3) He puts up with me. Not a lot of people would deal well with my ugly mood swings, especially since I don’t swing from happy to cranky, but from cranky to downright pissed (being happy is over-rated in my book). But Michael seems capable of riding out the storms and content to deal with my usual level of snarkiness, so how can I complain about that?

4) He’s got the money, honey, and he earned it. My dad always used to say, “You can marry a rich man just as easily as you can marry a poor one.” I say marry a smart man, because being rich doesn’t necessarily mean a guy’s got enough brains to hold onto his dough, whereas a smart man will figure out how to make money no matter what. Michael has two degrees in aerospace engineering. Guess what? We ain’t hurting for cash over here.

5) He lets me stay home and be a lazy bum. Okay, you and I both know that house wives, or domestic engineers, or whatever the hell you want to call us, are not lazy people. We work our asses off cleaning the house and raising the kids. But there was a time before kids when I used to clean house and work a job out in the real world, and that royally sucked because it left me no time to do the things I loved, like writing and art. So two years before Cassie came along, Michael and I agreed I would quit my job to start my own business. Six years later, I still make almost zero money, but I’m so much happier now. Wait a second, didn’t I just say happiness was over-rated? Okay, I’m not happy, but I’m not killing anybody either, and that’s a good thing.

6) He’s still good looking after thirteen years of marriage. If you think this one doesn’t matter, think again. If you don’t find your mate physically attractive after several years of marriage, you got problems. Nobody wants to wake up one morning, look at their spouse and say, “Damn, that’s ugly.” Trust me on this one.

7) I love him, pure and simple. This one isn’t open to reason or logic. It’s got nothing to do with his money, his looks, or his ability to cook. I just love the big doofus. He’s mine and he’s going to stay mine, even if he does drive me crazy at times. Anybody got a problem with that? No? I didn’t think so.

And that’s it, seven reasons why I’m still married, in spite of my bad attitude yesterday and in spite of his driving me crazy. There are more reasons than this, but these are the first ones that came to mind and I’m out of writing time now so I’ll just close here. I’m sure if you come back in another thirteen years, Michael will still be driving me crazy, but we’ll still be married too, so I won’t have anybody to blame but myself, as always.