this afternoon while i was napping and positiverolemodel and evilgremlin were working on their robot in the garage, spazmonkey fell asleep. i don’t know if i’ve mentioned it before, but the boy is just NOT allowed to take naps. if he does, he stays up until 10, 11 pm… 1 am… and it’s not like he just hangs out awake in bed. he tries to wake up his brothers, sings really loudly, stacks up things to climb on, kicks the wall out of boredom, demands milk and trips to the potty… and i just can’t handle it. i don’t care how fucking tired he is. i’d rather put up with him bitching and moaning at 6 PM because he’s tired than put up with him bitching and moaning at 11 PM when *I’M* tired.
so he had been asleep for 90 minutes, a full sleep cycle, and i woke him up. this can sometimes be incredibly difficult. when you live in a house with two other boys who are just as loud as you are, you learn to sleep through incredible levels of disturbance. i have personally witnessed dramaqueen bouncing up and down on spazmonkey’s back in a piggy-back ride manner while chanting “WAKE! UP! WAKE! UP! WAKE! UP!” with every bounce… all with no noticeable effect on spazmonkey, save some slightly irregular breathing. when waking him from an impromptu nap, i can go so far as to force him to stand up, blow in his face, give him wet willies, tickle him, offer him candy, and all manner of other attention-getting and/or obnoxious things, and be rewarded with little more than one eye slitted open in my general direction and an angry whine.
tonight, however, he sat bolt upright and stared around… like a zombie. the lights were on and nobody was home. i offered him milk and juice… he looked at me dumbly. i offered him cereal, and he just looked at the bowl. so i put the bowl on the table and went to take some cookies out of the oven, leaving him standing in the living room staring at a bowl of cereal. when i came back into the living room, he was taking a huge bite out of some sort of stick. i’m trying to figure out what kind of stick-like food he might have found… we haven’t had slim jims in a while… the twizzlers have been gone for a few weeks… i asked him what it was, and he stared at me, chewing slowly. that’s when i saw the blue on his teeth.
me: dude, don’t eat the crayon.
SM: oooooookaaaaaay. *keeps chewing slowly*
me: seriously, you have a crayon in your mouth. don’t eat the crayon.
SM: *unable to focus his eyes on me anymore, takes to staring at the stub of crayon in his hand as he continues to chew*
i ran for a paper towel, and held it in front of his mouth…. he kept chewing.
me: spit out the crayon, man.
SM: ooooooooohkay. *opens his mouth to let the badly mangled cylinder fall out, stays there for a moment to let the blue spit dribble out behind it.*
thank god, because that was going to be unpleasant if i had to fight him for it. i gave him a cookie, put on a star wars movie, and within five minutes, he had curled back up on the chair and fallen asleep. it was 7 PM, but i didn’t even try to wake him up again. he wins! so i had PRM carry him and DQ to bed… so i should be awakened at 3-4 am by either cries of hunger or a big bin of toys getting dumped onto the living room floor. whatever. it’s easier than trying to deal with a kid who’s solidly on another planet.
this is further proof that they’re related to their daddy. because holy SHIT that man can do a good job of pretending to be awake, minus the part where he actually makes sense. some of my favorite examples:
VIGNETTE #1: PRM naps in bed during the day while on night float, it’s 3 PM, i need to pick EG up from school, and can’t find my keys. so i sneak quietly into the bedroom to see if i’ve left them on the bedside table. PRM’s eyes shoot open… and ain’t NOBODY home.
me: sorry. have you seen my keys?
PRM: *not talking. or blinking.*
me: i thought i might have left my keys in here. nevermind.
PRM: *still neither talking nor blinking, but looking horrified.*
me: okay then. go back to sleep.
PRM: *looks steadily more horrified; his eyes widen and his mouth slackens.*
me: it’s okay. really. go back to sleep.
so i head downstairs to sweep the countertops for my keys, the most frequently lost object in the history of mankind. within a minute, PRM has stumbled down the stairs, looking so horrified and confused you’d think he was awake because i had come in and taken a shit on his pillow.
PRM: don’t walk away from me when we’re talking.
me: *grinning* dude, you weren’t talking.
PRM: i was- in the middle of trying to talk- to you… and you just walked out!
me: seriously. you weren’t talking. go back to bed.
PRM: i was TALKING. to YOU! and you just walked away from me! how can you be so disrespectful?
at this point, i just start laughing and can’t stop. he’s looking at me like he can’t figure out who i am.
me: dude, i don’t have time for this. i’m late. everything’s cool. i promise. just please, god, go back to bed now.
PRM: i’m just trying to talk to my wife and she’s… being… like… MEAN!
me: oh, god, go to bed.
PRM: disrespectful and mean!
me: yes. and we should talk about this later. GO TO BED.
VIGNETTE #2: asleep before his head hit the pillow… but unfortunately not done running his mouth yet.
PRM: what’s wrong with this pillow?
i reach over and feel his pillow… and it’s the same, unaltered pillow he’s been sleeping on for months.
me: nothing.
PRM: my pillow’s all fucked up.
i feel it more carefully… it’s not wadded up, nothing’s been spilled on it, it’s straight, it’s flat, it’s just the way he likes it.
me: it’s exactly the same as it is every night. go to sleep.
PRM: well, then i guess i’ll put up with it… just like i do every night.
here’s where i start laughing and can’t stop.
PRM: what are you laughing at? *he’s so far gone now that his mouth is barely moving and his words are mushy.*
me: you’re just such a BITCH sometimes! *i’m now howling with laughter and can barely breathe… which seems to wake him up just enough to respond one last time.*
PRM: shut up, you mean bitch, before i pee on your side of the bed.
he used up the rest of that breath laughing… and with his very next breath was snoring. i shit you not.
VIGNETTE #3: so tonight, after we finished watching a movie, i can see his eyelids sagging – kinda sexy bedroom eyes, like elvis on 3 different kinds of pills. he flops into bed with a book, leaving the bedside lamp on.
me: oh, hell no.
PRM: what?
me: you’re going to read for all of about 30 seconds and then fall asleep with the lights on, and my pregnant ass is going to have climb over you to turn off the lamp.
PRM: i’ll turn out the light.
me: your narcoleptic ass has never turned out the light in your goddamn life.
PRM: i’m gonna read.
me: you’re gonna turn out the light. take your ass to the bathroom to read… you don’t fall asleep on the toilet. mostly.
PRM: fuck you.
me: turn out the light!
PRM: i’m going to pee on your side of the bed.
me: that’s fine so long as you turn out the goddamn light first!
oh, and a quick trogdor update: after spending all of saturday escalating the whole labor thing, contractions going steadily from 15 to 10 to 5 minutes apart, he was all “haaaahaa, SIKE! i’m takin a damn nap now, fool. see you on the flip side… WHENEVER I DAMN WELL FEEL LIKE IT!” so the contractions got farther apart… then closer… then farther. anyway. could be today, could be next weekend. whatever. i’ll let y’all know when it’s done. i could go on and on at length about all the stupid details, but that’s really only fascinating for a certain subgroup of people, the one i like to call “pain in the ass boring women.” topics of interest to this subgroup include, and are almost entirely limited to: babies, birthing, shopping, how men, especially their husbands, suck, what awesomely enriching shit they’ve done for their above-average children lately, and what shitty parents any women not currently within earshot are. for the record, i tore up my membership card in that group long ago. my kids are happy and don’t own flashcards, my husband is not a pain in my ass and i’m not a pain in his, and i really don’t want to hear about how you were in labor for 873 hours and it was, like, SOOOOO painful and stuff. i’m already beyond sick of hearing myself talk about this labor shit; i only brought it up last time because i thought it was almost OVER. man, fuck this. i was almost impressed with the slow, steady, textbook pace of labor on a weekend when my parents were visiting and my husband was off work. now that my parents have gone home, i’m stir-crazy with the whole “stay home so your water doesn’t break in public” thing, and daddy’s about to go back to work 45 minutes away, i’m sure he’s about to be ready to kick it back into gear and pop out. if he can also manage to bust his way out while i’m at walmart, right before i’m supposed to be picking up one of his brothers from school, he will have pretty much maximized the chaos and inconvenience. so i’m expecting his stupid little ass at about 2:50 PM on a weekday.
