Let me get this straight: After carrying and birthing Pitter, he bestows all of his crap on me, while his father sails through most parenting duties with virtually no complaints and in half the time. How is this fair in the universe?
What’s that? The peanut gallery would like examples? My pleasure.
Case 1: The Infernal Car
Whenever I put Pitter in his carseat, it’s an alligator-wrestling match with bucking and twisting and holy-hell raising squeals. And the car trip itself? One long Whine Fest.
On the few days Sweet Cheeks loads our sweet boy into the car on his own, Pitter chuckles and babbles happily to him. Then Sweet Cheeks turns on the radio and Pitter pleasantly waves his arms in his version of a seated dance.
Sweet Cheeks 1
Me 0
Case 2: The Daycare Weepies
When I drop Pitter off at daycare, he either sports the I’m-about-to-cry-pitifully big eyes, or puts on his catatonic I’m-pretending-this-isn’t-happening mask. Both make tiny stabs at my heart. When I return to pick him up so many hours later, I peek into the window to see what he’s doing. Usually he’s playing quietly with a book or climbing a little stairway gym. He’s content enough. The second I enter the room and he sees me, his eyes brim with the recognition of the day’s abandonment and he runs over, arms up in the prayer that I’ll immediately end the obvious all-day torture of being away from me. He clings to me like a monkey and often sobs while I gather his things. When we get to the car, well, see alligator-wrestling matches above.
When Sweet Cheeks does the daycare routine without me, Pitter rarely shows his cards, or, he’s actually fine with the whole thing. Few tears, if any. See you later, pops. And later, Oh? Had you left? Great. Let’s go home then. In the car, it’s all Jack Johnson CDs, wrist-dancing, and sunshine.
Sweet Cheeks 2
Me 0
Case 3: For the Love of God Go to Sleep
But for naps, Pitter now officially refuses to nurse to sleep. This is a fairly recent development. He begs to nurse after his bath like his life depends on it and each night I think, Oh please just fall asleep on my lap so Sweet Cheeks and I can have a conversation before we pass out ourselves, or watch an episode of Entourage. And after ten minutes of nursing, Pitter pops up like my milk was espresso, and runs around the living room like an imp.
Since all past attempts to put Pitter into his crib awake have resulted in hours of hysterical screaming (we only tried it twice because it felt pretty close to child abuse), this wide-awake and refusing to nurse to sleep at 8 pm thing is a quandry. For the last few nights I’ve settled into our bed with him, lights off, read stories, and then pretended I’m asleep until he calms down. He cries at first, then gets cuddly, then plays under the sheets, then examines Good Night Moon on his own, and then finally begins to treat my body like a jungle gym. Slowly his acrobatics exhaust him and he lies face-first down on my stomach, or cuddles next to me and falls asleep.
This whole thing? It takes between half an hour and an hour.
Tonight, I implored Sweet Cheeks to give it a try without me. It only seemed fair since I’ve been chained to a chair for more than a year every night to nurse Pitter to sleep. I figured I’d have a nice chunk of time to surf blogs or read while Sweet Cheeks played possum in bed with our boy.
Fifteen minutes later, Sweet Cheeks emerged from our bedroom. Well that was the easiest thing I’ve ever done! He exclaimed.
He’s asleep? I hissed.
Yep. But to be fair, he had a long day running around outside and he didn’t get a late afternoon cat nap…
Is it wrong that I wanted to punch my husband in the face?
Sweet Cheeks 3
Me 0
But who’s keeping score?
Clearly, the lesson here is that parenthood isn’t that hard. Not for Dads, anyway. I must have been a very, very bad girl in a past life to deserve the emotional BooHoo Soupy Slime Pitter gives me, while his father instead gets a nice dose of Cheerio, Pa Pa!
I know that Pitter’s vulnerability with me is a dear connection that he shares with no one else…at least until he falls in love for the first time. And I should cherish it and blah blah, but have you tried to wrestle an alligator or spent an hour as a human jungle-gym with pinchable nipples?
2 Comments
September 8, 2007 at 9:13 pm
When we found out what a pro hubby was at the whole bedtime thing, we let him completely take over in that area. Tell your hubby since he’s so good he can put Pitter to bed every night. They’ll both love the special daddy/baby moment each night and you’ll get a few moments to read blogs or down a glass of wine like it’s a shot of whiskey!
September 10, 2007 at 7:39 am
Yes–we are definitely going to make bedtime Daddy time from now on!