Longest Day Ever

Breaking news!  Dante pooped on the potty today!!!!! Woohoo!!!!!!  We celebrated with M&Ms, there was much jumping up and down and congratulatory exclamations; we will have a cupcake after dinner tonight; and tomorrow we will go buy him a new toy. Yes, I stooped to bribing him with toys, and I am not the least bit ashamed, because IT WORKED!  And don't tell me that if you were cleaning poop off the floor every day, you wouldn't do the exact same thing. 

Now we just have to hope that he remembers how exciting and fabulous this whole thing is, and that he does it every time from now on. 

It was good timing, too, because we had one crazy bad night last night. Of course I stayed up too late last night watching the stupid American Idol premiere, and of course last night was the night the boys decided that they didn't feel like sleeping. 

Gabe got up at 2am to go to the bathroom. He has a hard time getting back to sleep, and his being out and about woke me up, so I was having a hard time getting back to sleep. But eventually he settled down in his room and was being pretty quiet, and I was just drifting off to sleep around 3am when Dante came running in our room crying. 

He had woken up because he had 'the funny feet.' That's what he calls it when his foot falls asleep and feels all tingly. It happens to him occasionally and really upsets him, and it usually takes us a while to calm him down. And of course Dante's commotion caused Gabe - who hadn't yet gotten back to sleep - to come out of his room to investigate, so we were all up. Hooray. 

We finally got them both back in bed around 3:30, and I was again just drifting off to sleep when I heard a pack of coyotes howling and barking outside. We hear them occasionally, and it's a very loud, very disturbing noise.

And since neither of the boys had yet gone back to sleep, they both came running in our room asking where the dogs were. 

There were several other disturbances, and several other instances of me almost falling back asleep only to be woken by someone or something, and in the end, none of us ever fully went back to sleep. At all. Not a wink. 

After a while, I gave up on trying to get the boys back to bed and told them to stay in Gabe's room and play quietly, and to stay OUT of our room. They mostly followed those instructions, except that they were anything but quiet, and we finally all came downstairs around 7am. 

I was in an awful mood due to being incredibly tired - and, yes, angry at the two little people whose fault it was that I was so tired. But I didn't want to have a terrible day because of that, so I tried my best to pull myself together and not be crabby. 

We were all losing it around 10am, though, and instead of sitting around the house wallowing in our exhaustion and anger, we piled into the car and went to do some shopping. I took the long, long way to the store, and they both got some sleep, and after a quick stop at Target, we went out to lunch. 

While we were sitting at lunch, "Our House" by Madness came on in the restaurant, and the boys were both sitting in the booth dancing and bopping along to the music, and I had one of those moments where I realized that no matter what they do to make me angry, or upset me, or drive me insane - whether it's keeping me up half the night for no reason whatsoever, or pooping all over my living room floor - I will always love them so much that it hurts.

Comments

[Chad in the AZ Desert]

Congrats on the potty training! And there is no such thing as stooping to anything with that. It worked and that's all that matters.

Sorry to hear about the sleepless night. We sure have had a few of those, too.

[Wes]

I absolutely HATE it when I have nights like that, and they come all too often, without kids! Heck, I'd get my kid an entire Toys'R'Us if they went on the potty instead of the floor :-)