Last week Laura and I met Hysteria.
It was about 8:30 pm and we were just trying to settle down to go to bed. I was so tired I was literally almost drooling. I was exceptionally desperate to sleep because I needed to wake up at 10:40pm to go pick up my dear friend Abby from the airport.
Laura had just gotten Simon to sleep and put him down in his co-sleeper. I was sliding down the delicious off ramp to sleep when Laura's voice brought a halt to my journey.
"Do you want to sing to him?", she asked so sweetly.
Let me explain. Many a well meaning infant care book and website has talked about the critical need to develop a "bedtime ritual". Give a bath, sing the same lullaby, have a little catch phrase- whatever you do, do the same thing every night. Makes sense, right?
This is all well and good unless bathing your child makes him scream so hard he turns into a purple faced creature that looks like something Pixar developed for Monsters, Inc. We DO always manage to get our phrases in. Mine is "Sleepy time, little boy" and Laura's is "Lila Tov, Simon. Sweet Dreams". Super easy to squeeze in as you're losing the capacity to speak English/Hebrew due to exhaustion.
But the singing. Last week the singing prompted hysteria.
Laura says, "Do you want to sing to him?" I respond, "Isn't he already asleep? which probably sounded like "mrflegurfl". Then I fast forwarded to Simon in therapy at 20 saying, "I remember Mommy singing to me every night, but where was Mama?". Fine.
Laura takes a breath to start singing and suddenly my mind is a complete blank. You could have offered me $1 million dollars at that moment and I couldn't have told you what our lullaby song was (James Taylor's "Close Your Eyes") nor sung you the first line. The song finally starts to sound familiar and I chime in after a verse. Then I whisper to Laura, "I forgot what the song is!". Mind you, we've sung this song every single night for almost a month at this point.
Laura starts to chuckle. I start to chuckle. Suddenly I am hysterically laughing. Laura tries to soldier on with the song. I am gone, now laughing so hard I am silent. Despite what they say, losing one's mind IS contagious. Laura's delightful song collapses into more hysterical laughter. I try to pull it together and start over. I fail. Laura tries. She fails. I start to feel like my head might explode as we try not to wake up Simon with our hilarity. I'm having flashbacks to moments of the uncontrollable laughter in church with my cousins in Texas. Is God going to strike us down for failing to sing a lullaby to this sleeping baby?
We finally stopped laughing, ditched the song (he was asleep already, OKAY?) and slept like the dead. For 2 hours.
It was about 8:30 pm and we were just trying to settle down to go to bed. I was so tired I was literally almost drooling. I was exceptionally desperate to sleep because I needed to wake up at 10:40pm to go pick up my dear friend Abby from the airport.
Laura had just gotten Simon to sleep and put him down in his co-sleeper. I was sliding down the delicious off ramp to sleep when Laura's voice brought a halt to my journey.
"Do you want to sing to him?", she asked so sweetly.
Let me explain. Many a well meaning infant care book and website has talked about the critical need to develop a "bedtime ritual". Give a bath, sing the same lullaby, have a little catch phrase- whatever you do, do the same thing every night. Makes sense, right?
This is all well and good unless bathing your child makes him scream so hard he turns into a purple faced creature that looks like something Pixar developed for Monsters, Inc. We DO always manage to get our phrases in. Mine is "Sleepy time, little boy" and Laura's is "Lila Tov, Simon. Sweet Dreams". Super easy to squeeze in as you're losing the capacity to speak English/Hebrew due to exhaustion.
But the singing. Last week the singing prompted hysteria.
Laura says, "Do you want to sing to him?" I respond, "Isn't he already asleep? which probably sounded like "mrflegurfl". Then I fast forwarded to Simon in therapy at 20 saying, "I remember Mommy singing to me every night, but where was Mama?". Fine.
Laura takes a breath to start singing and suddenly my mind is a complete blank. You could have offered me $1 million dollars at that moment and I couldn't have told you what our lullaby song was (James Taylor's "Close Your Eyes") nor sung you the first line. The song finally starts to sound familiar and I chime in after a verse. Then I whisper to Laura, "I forgot what the song is!". Mind you, we've sung this song every single night for almost a month at this point.
Laura starts to chuckle. I start to chuckle. Suddenly I am hysterically laughing. Laura tries to soldier on with the song. I am gone, now laughing so hard I am silent. Despite what they say, losing one's mind IS contagious. Laura's delightful song collapses into more hysterical laughter. I try to pull it together and start over. I fail. Laura tries. She fails. I start to feel like my head might explode as we try not to wake up Simon with our hilarity. I'm having flashbacks to moments of the uncontrollable laughter in church with my cousins in Texas. Is God going to strike us down for failing to sing a lullaby to this sleeping baby?
We finally stopped laughing, ditched the song (he was asleep already, OKAY?) and slept like the dead. For 2 hours.
