I have this reoccurring dream that I suddenly discover another room in our house that nobody knows about. I get giddy to the point of tears thinking about how each child will have their own room which will result in EVERYONE (and by everyone I mostly mean me) getting a good night’s rest. Bedtime will now be a breeze. I dance through the halls of our spacious new home like a carefree Maria from The Sound of Music. Bliss. It’s always a really happy dream – until I wake up, which is usually because someone is crying.
But even if we had an extra room, bedtime would still be hard.
Why is that? Why do my children wait until exactly 7:59 to tell me that they need to go potty, eat a banana, do that homework they forgot about and brush their teeth for real this time because, “I was just kidding when I said I brushed them earlier mom” – which explains why someone in history invented the weird tradition of parents smelling their kids’ breath with the threat of punishment. Emily recently told me her kids delight in blowing their dragon breath in her face when asked if they brushed. Touché kids, touché.
And they can’t even lie down unless they find that one specific toy. You know, the doll with the curly blue hair, the pink shirt with the snow cone stain, holding her pet poodle named Frankie with her little purse on the other arm which has an open tube of lip gloss jammed into it. They haven’t played with it in a month, but all of the sudden it’s a crisis if I can’t find it in the abyss of toys in their room. So I have to channel my inner American Picker skills to find that dolly in the haystack. I could handle this scenario much better if it happened in the middle of the day, but by bedtime, my brain is toast. Burnt toast. And my sense of compassion is the jelly running off the toast and crashing onto the floor.
Once I do get them to bed and do the mandatory back scratching and anti-bad dream prayers, then I sit down on the couch to enjoy my .23 seconds of silence before the real dance begins. If I’m feeling strong then I can ignore the calls of “Moooommmmyyyyy” long enough that they change their tactic and start saying “Dadddddyyyy.” At which point I look at my husband, try not to smile and whisper, “I think they want you.”
Our bedtime mission is further complicated by the fact that two of our children sleep in the same room.
One of whom likes to talk – a lot. Which explains this conduct mark from school:
The average woman speaks 16,000 words in a day. Well, my 5 year old can out-talk that average woman any day. She uses this skill to her advantage to thoroughly annoy her older brother while he pretends to be going to sleep. She whispers, she sings, she laughs – she is her own babbling brook overflowing with a vocabulary of adult-sized words, most of which she doesn’t know the meaning. During the day it’s very entertaining, but after hours…She could be at the peak of a genius moment, reciting the Constitution word for word and all I would hear is the children from Nanny McPhee shouting, “We are NEVER going to bed!”
Her older brother on the other hand is feigning exhaustion and patiently waiting for her to crash so he can draw smiley faces on her arms and clip fifteen hair bows on her head while she sleeps. This is always a pleasant discovery in the morning when I have negative 20 minutes to get everyone dressed and to school.
And one of two things happens when the kids are going to be late to school:
A) I decide we are all going to be even more late because Mommy needs to get dressed or
B) I cross my fingers and hope that I see no one I know as I check my kids in at the front desk wearing my “I’ve given up on fashion/midnight shopping at Wal-Mart/sometimes pajama” clothes (don’t judge, I know you have these too).
This all explains why my Google history says things like, “kids treadmill – will it make them tired?”, “why is my brain toast” and “pajama jeans”.
Parenthood can feel like 90% survival and 10% actually teaching your mini me’s how to live.
Sometimes I beat myself up for not delighting in being a parent 24/7, but then I think my frustrations are actually good for me. Being a parent has a lot in common with being married – it’s not meant to make you happy, but to make you holy.
(Serious moment) The hard truth is that parenthood reveals your flaws like few other things in life can. This keeps me humble. It keeps me from judging others too harshly. It makes me crave the Holy Spirit to speak to my heart. It gives me so much grace for my own wonderful parents. It keeps me on my knees- and I think that’s right where God wants me. At the end of myself is where He can begin to work.
“Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”
2 Corinthians 7:1 ESV
Your humble, toast-for-brains, sister-in-Christ,
