TheMommyBlog

Tuesday, October 07, 2008 Family

Tuck-ins are a BIG deal in our home. Like, a VIP deal. I know that it’s my own doing; I made an informed decision long ago to start only what I was willing to continue. I keep telling myself that this is better than placing a cloth diaper over my head to keep it warm while nursing the baby to sleep and then timing my rise out of the glider to slip into the walking rocking motion, which was timed with the leaning forward, dipping my head to let the warm cloth fall into the crib to be smoothed as I rocked my baby into position on top so as not to be shocked awake by the cool sheets.

I know. But how many times do you want to do this whole placing-in-crib thing? It’s like swapping that bag of sand out for the priceless gem in Raiders of the Lost Ark. You have to get it right the first time or things will get hairy, and fast.

Ten years on, it’s still the final nail in the day’s coffin—and I mean that in the most loving way—that has to be secured before I can go out to the kitchen and survey the wreckage that has to be sorted before I can go to sleep. Usually I make a pit stop at the fridge for a glass of wine to keep me company.

It’s important to have just enough substance in the tuck-in ritual to keep ‘em interested, but not so complicated that you want to plunge safety scissors into your temple. On top of the straightening of the covers, placing of the pillows, kiss and hug, and promise to snuggle in the morning, we’ve got a new wrinkle.

Until about a year ago, Daphne had never really slept in her bed. Alone. You see, my ex stayed home with the children, starting with her birth. His job went away in the downturn just as mine was revving up, and it happened that I started to earn enough to support us and keep us in good benefits (Ahahahahaha, can you imagine? Me? With good benefits? Good times, as my daughter would say.), so we decided to leave it that way for a few years.

Wait—did I mention that we intended to stop at two children? And that we’d converted the nursery into a home office? Um, we did. And then we had Daphne. For whom we bought pretty, pink bedding to go with the grass-green office armoire. Only, it was hard to work in that room with a baby sleeping three feet away. Or make business calls. So, heck, my ex thought, why not just put her down for naps in the master bed? And since she was so used to that, why not let her sleep there too? Eventually, we took the crib out and put a double bed in that room, and for simplicity’s sake my ex took up residency there. You see, we were still living together for over a year after the divorce ball got rolling.

So basically, my daughter thought that she lived with me, and had a fabulous, extra room for her big-girl bed and treasures. Gil slept on pink sheets covered with thistles (printed, not real) in the brass bed in the pink room, next to the green armoire.

Fast forward through a lot of stuff I can’t think about without getting the rest of that bottle. Years went by while times got tougher, and after a few years of dating, Phil and I figured we needed to get her out of that bed and into her own.

Easier said than done.

So. I modified the routine. With the kids spending half their time at Dad’s, I always let her sleep with me the first night back, and the last night before she leaves again. Soon I’ll cut that in half, but for now it’s stable. Dylan’s no fool, and very sweetly asks from time to time to have the second night with me, because he can’t sleep when it’s hot and there’s a fan over my bed. I could tell him to stop wearing flannel pjs but that would be calling his bluff.

Fortunately, Logan hasn’t asked to be part of the Musical Beds. He loves his bed. He’s a den animal. No, really—he used to spend most of his time in a burrow he made out of the couch cushions, with his head poking out just enough to watch David Attenborough’s Life of Mammals three thousand times a week. He’s cut that down to just a few times a year, but his bed is definitely his den.

Just now he was totally burrowed in when I made a pretense of shuffling and pulling up his covers and he stopped me, saying, “No! Do it through the speaking hole!” Oh dear Barbara. I pulled the covers back a little and he said again, “No! Here, there’s a little breathing hole right here.” And so he kissed me goodnight through the bedding. Alrighty then!

He was cracking himself up, and I could hear him moving things around. “Mom. Wanna come see my little lookout hole?”

“Um, not really, I already saw the show, but thanks.”

”But it’s going to be really, really cute, like a little baby bear…” His voice dropped a register. “…chewing the flesh off a deer that its mother caught it.”

P.S. Awww, I just noticed that Dylan fell asleep on the couch, waiting for me.