What Does “Long Holiday Weekend” Mean To You?

Since Babygirl has been (mostly) sleeping through the night, I have been (mostly) sleeping through the night, also. But this past Sunday was a doozy…

I knew that it might be a tough Memorial Day weekend, as Hubby left last week for an 8-day stretch. Let’s just say that the phrase “long holiday weekend” has an entirely different meaning when your partner is away and you have two kids under 3 years old.

Granted, I have a good support system. But as I have described, the whole suport system is strained with Hubby’s travel schedule plus my work schedule… Nana helps a ton, and in this case, was a pure lifesaver. But overnight, it’s all me.

The kids are a bit out of sorts with Hubby’s traveling. Babyboy, who is almost 3 years old, asks for him, especially at night, when we’re rocking and singing. Babygirl is usually already asleep, and he’ll be cuddled up on my lap, and he’ll suddenly ask, with this odd, sort of sad inflection of his, “Daddee coming HOOME?”

It’s so heartbreaking. I try to explain that Yes, Daddy will be home soon, in a few days…

And Babyboy gets excited and says, “Coming home in the CAR?” (which he says “CAAAH?” like a pure Bostonian.)

And I say, Yes, coming home in the car! and then he snuggles up and soon thereafter he goes into his crib, hugging his kitty cat animal, and falls asleep.

Sunday was a bit rough because Babyboy was ready for sleep way before Babygirl was ready, and if she’s still up, and I’m solo, it’s near impossible to do his bedtime routine. So both kids were kind of difficult for awhile, while I tried to manage the dinner/ bath/ bedtime routines with one overtired and one hyper child, which ends up being pretty much the same thing (overemotional child), and we all ended up awake past our bedtimes.

Finally all were tucked in… me too.

But at 2 am, I was rudely awakened by the fire alarm in our bedroom, chirping that annoying high-pitched battery change chirp.

Now, I know you’re supposed to change them all on daylight savings time day so this doesn’t happen, but we just haven’t, and so they all chirp whenever they need a new battery, and that’s often in the middle of the night. Usually you can ignore them, but this was right in our room… Had to be dealt with.

So I groggily dragged a stepstool upstairs and climbed up, unhooked the darned chirping thing from the ceiling, and I started to step down… Only to completely miss the step, and fall, hard, sideways onto the storage bin at the foot of the bed. OUCH.

I was stunned, and I thought I must have broken my leg, and in that first few seconds of bewildered pain, I wondered if I could crawl to the phone, and if the firemen would wake up the kids if they had to bash through the front door.

But then I was able to slowly gather myself together and stand. I was OK.

But there was no way I was going to get on that stepstool again, so I left the fire alarm unhooked and tried to go back to sleep.

Of course I lay there thinking of every tragic newspaper article I have ever read about families that died in the fire because their fire alarms were unhooked.

I finally got to sleep, and then, WAAAAAH!

Babygirl hasn’t woken up in the night more than once since I sleep-trained her. The only other time she woke up, it was because I took the crib bumpers down to wash them, and she got her leg stuck in the crib slats in the middle of the night. (Yes, I know that the AAP recommends against the use of crib bumpers, but you know, the only time we have run into trouble with them, is when they weren’t there. I love them. Of course, we have also always used baby blankets and stuffed animals…Each one of our kids has a veritable menagerie in there.)

So I went in there to check on her, and she was standing up, reaching out for me. No idea what woke her up. So I rocked her back to sleep, pretty uneventfully.

But then, it was almost 4 a.m. The cats decided that it must be wake-up time, and were head-butting for pats and food. I managed to fend off the beasts and get back into bed, and even to fall asleep…

Until WAAAAH! 6 am, Babygirl was up again, this time for good. Ugh. I stumbled downstairs with her and got her her bottle, which of course I had JUST THIS ONCE forgotten to prep the night before. And then she didn’t want to be put down, and the coffee had to be made, and the cats fed, and then Babyboy woke up in a cranky mood…

All of this resulted, of course, in me having a mini-breakdown. I was in absolute tears with both kids howling right along with me, me trying to get Babyboy his juice and Babygirl her yogurt.

What do you do in a situation like this? First, Thank God it was a holiday, and I didn’t need my brain. I then cancelled all the plans I had had in my head, like any intellectual plans.

Then, I called my mom. She miraculously appeared and helped get both kids dressed, and took them for the morning. The only thing I did that day was clean. Clean and organize the house.

And replace the fire alarm batteries.