Tuesday, October 06, 2015

The Sleep Avoiding Ninja

          There is an infinite number of mind boggling things about motherhood.  Firstly, how can you grow a human INSIDE ANOTHER HUMAN!??!  That just doesn’t make sense.  How can that possibly be a viable form of reproduction.  Yeast…budding…look there’s a lump on my side that is about to become another one of me exactly like me…sure, why not? Makes sense.  You could be all “Hey little bud dude, how’s it going over there?  Ready to split off? Not yet?  No worries! Take your time!”  Eggs.  Sure!  Little self-contained nugget of reproduction…I can handle that.  Sit on it all day to keep it warm?  Sure, I GUESS I can suffer through ALL the offerings that Netflix has to offer, except, you know, for those times that I get to get up and go to the bathroom with a bladder that is STILL ENTIRELY MY OWN, not squashed by a human living in a water balloon in my stomach.  Mammalian reproduction pretty much sucks.  I have a four month black out surrounding the last two months off gestation and the first two months of life surrounding all three of my children (because HOW COULD YOU NOT!?) but I do remember saying to my midwife “This is a stupid way to reproduce!!!” while I was on all fours and in the middle of pushing out baby number two.  (The fact that there is a baby number three is evidence of the effectiveness of that four month memory wipe surrounding the birth of all my children).  I also recall saying “Why am I having another baby!  I don’t know what to do with the babies I already have!” while baby #3 was being born, and apparently I used the word fuck so many times that my midwife thought the only way to get through to me was to tell me “Oh you’re having a fucking baby. You’re having a fucking baby right fucking now.”


           But that’s not actually what I wanted to talk about.  I wanted to talk about another completely mind boggling thing about mothering which is that all your kids are completely different from one another.  Same variables.  Same raw materials.  Completely different.  There is no such thing as an experienced mother because they change the goddamn rules with every single kid!!  NOT FAIR.

          So let me introduce you to the “baby” of the family.  First of all…female child.  That’s new!  That’s different.  You know the number of times that she’s peed on the toilet seat?  ZERO.  What is up with standing to pee?  BOYS INVENTED THAT!!  They’re like “HEY!  You know what this thing looks like? A HOSE!! You know what you can do with a hose?”  Well apparently the answer is write your name on the bathroom wall, if the amount of pee that I have wiped off of things is any indication.  There has not been a single day in the last 8 years where I was not in immediate contact with someone else’s piss. THEY DON’T TELL YOU THAT IN HEALTH CLASS!  Just because you have a penis doesn’t mean that sitting down to pee isn’t a fucking great idea, that’s all I’m saying.  Start a revolution.  Sit your boys on the toilet…done.  World peace.

          Youngest child.  You know what?  She’s learned ALL the tricks from all the other children.  Baby number one at bedtime?  His head hits the pillow and he is out like you flipped a switch.  Head, pillow, eyelids BOOM.  He sleeps like he’s on a timer.  10.5 hours and BING!  Eyes open and he is ready to torment his siblings and make fart jokes like it’s his goddamn job until 8:45pm when his clock winds down and the recharge cycle begins.  Child number 2? He gives a few half hearted attempts to squeeze me for a sip of water, a snuggle, one final chance to hose the bathroom with his piss…but really his heart isn’t in it.  He’s tired.  He WANTS to give in to the void.  After all tomorrow is another day, full of chances to throw temper tantrums about completely random shit like not having his toast on the right plate, or needing a GREEN lego!!!!!

          Child number 3?  She who is doomed to be the baby forever because this child factory has been shut DOWN?  She has watched, she has learned, she has studied with the masters until they had to come up with a belt that was blacker than black.  I give you THE SLEEP AVOIDING NINJA!! 
There is no song that can soothe her, even if she chose it.  The book you selected is WRONG.  Oh, you think you have the right stuffed animal because you had to search through two toy boxes and crawl under a couch to retrieve it the previous night? Well you are WRONG motherfucker. You might as well just take that teddy bear out to the backyard and put it out of its misery for all the good it will do you. This child cannot be lulled by cuddly objects. She is TOO TIRED.  Too tired for everything.  Too tired to get her own pajamas.  Too tired to brush her teeth.  Too tired to LIE IN HER BED.  You gave her a glass of water in the bathroom right after she brushed her teeth?!  NO!  The bedtime avoiding ninja’s mouth is dry!! So DRY!  “I stuck my finger in my mouth and it was not wet!” dry.  You heartless beast.  How could you!  This baby is obviously at the very edge of dehydration!!  NO NOT THAT WATER!!! That water was in the cup next to the bed from last night and tastes like dirt. “YOU MADE ME DRINK DIRT WATER!!!”

          What if I rub your back a little bit, baby ninja?  Maybe that will help you to relax.  “NO NOT LIKE THAT!!” You are rubbing WRONG!!! And anyway it’s her ELBOW that hurts, not her back, you cretin!!!  And she needs to stare into your FACE while she falls asleep.  You are using the WRONG pillow.  If she cannot see your face while she is slowly, oh so slowly, drifting off into a restless slumber then BOOM, it’s not happening.  The soft pink blanket?  IT HURTS HER TOE.  The quilt with the dinosaurs on it “I HATE DINOSAURS!!!” No one in this world has ever hated dinosaurs baby girl.  Dinosaurs are a constant.  Dinosaur love is universal!!!!

           
It’s a battle of wills.  A test of determination.  Who will fall asleep first? Sleep avoiding Ninja, or momma who will wake up with a back ache an hour later, unable to fall back asleep in her own bed because of the “nap” on a random pile of pillows, precisely constructed to provide the perfect “view” to ninja girl?  Right now the score is Momma zero, Ninja eleventy million.




Ragnar…who apparently will sleep when she’s dead.