Sleep and Sanity: underated aspects of parenting

Once in a blue moon Havana wakes up with a scream. Her subconscious is probably processing some aspect of her mad life as a 3-year old. As I enter her room and sit down bedside, with a gentle pat on the back she will often roll over and head back to her dreams. Other times she will already have begun to semi-coherently describe her dream to me. Then mid-sentence she'd turn over and return to scene that first woke her.
Crazier dreams no doubt emanate from Havana's 11-month old sister. Ilyana, unfortunately, will probably never be able to verify the visual contents of her slumber. Most likely she dreams of crawling, of standing, and the classic dreambreaker: of falling. Either way: when she wakes she wants only one thing. Ilyana’s demanding March to drink from her mother’s font every 3 hours remains unimpeded.
One night some 5 or 6 months ago her parents celebrated Ilyana’s first full night of unbroken sleep. We celebrated without full force, aware that worshiping the false god of the return of deep sleep would likely be premature. But for a full day back in January of this year we were lighter on our feet and carelessly expended the energy that we wouldn't need for that next night of unbroken sleep. That next night never came. We instead returned to the real world of uneven, shallow sleep, lying in wait of that sweet primal scream. And like the sun and moon, it came. And one of us rose up from bedside, as if carrying the entire weight of a million years of evolution on our frames, and zombied into Ilyana's room.
Sometimes I wish I too could return to the days when I was unencumbered by social restraints and could let out my own primal scream. But it’s too late. I can’t go back. But that doesn’t prevent my envy that Ilyana can scream as loud and long as her lungs will bear. Unlike the emotionally restrained adult world, babies can emote without a care. But like all babies she can also go from terrifying screech to giggle within 10 or 15 seconds. And it’s all socially acceptable.
Of the thousands of parenting methods available on bookshelves in California, ours tends towards attachment parenting. While we do not let our kids sleep in our bed, nor hang off our bodies all day, moreso, we do not let them cry unattended nor do we view our children as an inconvenience to some notion of our “careers”. Parenting is an inconvenience and a pleasurable one. It is full of adversity and struggle, the ingredients that can add color to what may have been the greyness that went before. Our single goal beyond keeping the young ones fed, clothed and sheltered, is that we attempt to help them be somewhat emotionally secure. That’s it.
But goals come at costs and ours is that for the first 12 months, with the exception of one January night, we have not slept past four hours in one stretch.
While the demands of parenting constantly press down on us, we have managed to construct our weekends around ourselves as parents. We do the normal kid stuff: the zoo and the park. But all stands in shadow to our single weekend goal: that our two children’s afternoon naptimes coincide and that their parents get about 4 hours a week locked away in our own room. After all, as flight attendants remind us, when the air mask fall, you put yours on first, so that you can breath, then you’re in a place to help the tiny ones get the air that they need.

First Crimes

It was her first verifiable crime. Albeit, a crime that few District Attorney’s would take to prosecution.
Havana and I went shopping for ink and car batteries. Meandering around the office supply store so as to get in and out as quickly as possible, Havana was in awe. The high ceilings, the bright colors, the light and of course the candy shelves at kids’ eye level. Usually Havana gets to point and yell to me before facing the inevitable denial of her candy request. Today she picked up some sugar and chocolate item packaged in a flashy wrapper. “We don’t buy candy babe, you know that” I reminded her. She knew that, but maybe she thought that on the millionth visit to a store she would get her wish. 999,715 visits to go.
After purchasing the ink, the clerk handed me the bag. It was lightweight enough for a three year old to carry, and good work training. “Yes, I can carry that Daddy.”
We went into the Auto supply store and went up to pay for the battery. Once again, even at the Auto store there was kids’ eye level candy: tons of it.
As I picked her up into her car seat in the front of the truck she tugged the plastic bag she held firmly. “D’you want me to take that, girl,” I enquired. She replied, all adult-like, “that’s okay daddy.”
As we got home, she rushed in the front door and spilled the bag onto the coffee table with a red shiny bag of skittles skidding out across the tabletop. “Where did that come from,” I asked. These days Havana’s boilerplate response to any wrong-doing, large or small, is a complete and utter denial. “Where did the candy come from?” I asked again. “Nowhere” she replied. She sunk into the sofa. She knew she had broken some inane adult rule, but she wasn’t sure which one. Whatever she’d done wrong she realized the distance between her and her candy was going to widen.
“Did you take it from the office store or the auto store?” I asked.
“I didn’t take it.” Figuring the loss of candy possession was building too much emotion into the moment I moved on to the moral of the situation. I held back from saying that stealing was wrong. We live in a society based on stealing from the working class, so stealing will always be based on who is stealing and who is getting stolen from. “Havana, stealing from a store will get you in trouble,” I lectured. When Havana is old enough to know the whens, hows and ifs of shoplifing, she will know how not to get caught. But that’ll be several years down the road.
At 3 years of age, there’s a lot of lecturing going on about rules. It’s annoying from the parent’s perspective, but necessary. Kids are little adults with less experience, and helping them learn to be independent, dialectically entails a lot of rules.
I was of course a little proud that some massive corporate store lost 25 cents worth of profits and that Havana unawares of the big wheels that turn capitalism had played a large role in this miniscule dent.