“For the life of me, I can not wrap my very well educated mind around the fact that toddlers can and will fight off a good night’s sleep like it were the plague.”
I sit back down on my couch for the 4th time tonight listening to my son yells out “momma” for the thousandth time from his crib. “I will not move a muscle” I whisper to myself; especially since I’ve gone in there 4 times already in the last hour, and for the silliest of reasons ranging from his blanket not properly place across his body to his bunny rabbit not being tucked in just right.
“I’m so done”. You wanna know the worst part of it all? Although, I know his screams are for absolutely nothing I still fight this agonizing urge to go in there and tuck him in for the fifth time, kiss his little forehead and tell him night-night.“I know, I’m such a softy”
This can’t be life and this can’t be my nightly routine. I will not accept that my very tired 2 years old will now dictate bedtime around here and crash my evening mommy time.
“No, this is my time”. As much as I love my son and love my role as his mother, I’m not by any means ashamed to say that from the time I wake up, I look forward to bedtime. As I navigate through my crazy morning of attempting to not be more than 15 minutes late to work today, I think “9:00 pm”. While at work I think, “9:00 pm”. While I’m cooking dinner, during bath time, and completing my evening chores all I think is, “9:00 pm”.
“Oh yea, 9:00 baby”. 9:00 pm in my house is awesome, the whole house shuts down, televisions go off, wine is poured and momma gets to do absolutely nothing. Although I almost always end up doing something, the beauty in it is that I can choose whether or not I want to.
When you become a parent everything you do in your life is for your children. You work to care and provide for them, cook and clean to maintain what’s provided and blah, blah, blah, it’s a never-ending cycle. So after being super mom all day, I look forward to being absolutely nothing to nobody at 9:00 pm each night. I get excited to sit in silence, enjoy a glass of wine, shower for more than 5 minutes or work on some art. Some evenings I binge on Youtube videos and Hostess Cupcakes, other nights I face plant on my couch and wake up at 3 am in a puddle of drool.
Part 2
I learned the hard way that it sucks pretty bad to neglect yourself while attempting to balance parenting, work, family and the never-ending list of things that come along each day with each responsibility. My alone time is crucial now because it allows me the ability to recharge and refuel. I fully believe in the saying “you can’t pour from an empty cup” so I try hard every day to fill mines back up. Self-care is so much more than bubble baths, cheap wine, and sugar. Self-care is getting what you need out of your day to recenter and regroup for tomorrow. Whether that be falling asleep at 9:07 pm because sleep is awesome or staying up late to catch up on that mini-series, it’s simply doing whatever you enjoy. We need to make sure our cup is always full because no one else is. It took me having chest pains in the middle of my work day and being rushed to the hospital for what I thought was a heart attack for me to realize that I needed to take better care of myself. As I was being hooked up to an IV, heart monitor, and having numerous scans and tests done I can remember thinking “This isn’t how things are supposed to be”. You can imagine how silly I felt when the doctor came in and told me I was just simply exhausted.
I felt so helpless and I never wanted to feel that way again, I had to figure this out. I realized that after returning to work, I never really asked for help. I felt like I was bothering people. I felt bad if I got a sitter because I would think of my son the whole time I was away. Surely no one would care for him the way I did, but of course, I was wrong. The people that love me, and waited so patiently for his arrival, wanted and were ready to help me and with open arms too. “Batman had Robin, right?”
Yes! and he had his secret layer underground that he went and tinkered with cool toys in. Mines just happens to be on my couch and I would rather drink wine than tinker with toys.
So as you rack your brain about how toddlers can drink bath water and not get sick or how they have the fearlessness to nosedive from furniture, be sure to take a moment of time, 9:00 pm if it works for you, and rack your brain on ways that you can take care of your needs for that day too.
