Strollers are a copout / Being a primary caregiver is hard

Complaint blog

Lucy and I were out on our mostly-daily morning constitutional today, and I took notice of a woman pushing two 3-or-so-yr-old boys in a stroller. With me, I always let Lucy walk by herself, and lately I've even been letting her choose the path.

I couldn't help but think that pushing your kids around in a stroller is not exactly going to get those kids a lot of exercise. It's nice to see the outside world, cause kids tend to be cooped up inside a lot, but taking them out in a stroller seems like a copout to me.

However, if you're gonna take the kid to a place where they can get exercise,or if you're going someplace far away and you can't or don't want to drive, strollers are good. They keep the kid from running out into the street to get brutally murdered, or into stray dogs to get brutally mauled, and it keeps you from having to carry your little bag of potatoes.

When I take my girl outside, she's walking. The very reason I take her out on mostly daily constitutionals is to give her some room to run and stomp and release lots of that toddler energy. It makes nap times come sooner. If she doesn't nap, we both go insane: her from lack of sleep and bitchyness, and me from frustration and lack of alone time.

Naps are very very important. We all know this. I've learned that my Lucybeans won't sleep as easily if she doesn't get to go outside first. Every kid is different, however, and some don't need outside time to sleep on schedule.

But Lucy has (mostly) always been difficult to put down, and it's been even more difficulter lately. About two or three weeks ago is when it began, and it's become a daily occurrence. Around noon, she'll tell me, in her non-verbal way, that she wants her pacifier. She likes to have it while she falls asleep. So I take that as a cue that she wants to lay down and go to bed. That cue is reinforced when I say, "Are you ready to lay down and take a nap?" and she responds by running into her room.

She'll go right to her bed and sit on it, but I always have to lay her down and put her feet under the blankets, etc. Then we wait. I have to sit there until she falls asleep, cause she won't if I don't. Usually she likes to hold my hands.

The waiting begins to drive me nuts after a while, as I'll eventually realize I'm sitting there for no reason. Her eyes will stay open, and she'll fidget with her hair and look all around and point at things. Just about every time, I'll see her eyes begin to close at some point, and then pop back open.

It's really too bad that anger and force aren't useful for getting a kid to sleep. That just makes the kid's heart rate go up, and makes for bad feelings, and those aren't easy to sleep among. So I'll get sick of sitting there for a half hour, doing nothing, trying to be quiet, and I'll take her pacifier away and let her get up. She then stays up till 2 or 2:30.

So not only am I in there once a day to get her to sleep, but twice! It's fucking aggravating. My whole day seems like a period of taking care of her for the sole purpose of waiting for her to go to sleep, so I can do something for me. There's plenty of shit I want to do, but as I now have a kid, my life doesn't belong to me anymore. Lucille takes priority. So I just go along with the motions, waiting for some me time amid all the chaos of diaper changing, dressing, feeding, cleaning, disciplining, cleaning, reading to her, cleaning.

And some people tell me these are the best days of my life. Yeah fucking right. I love my kid, and it was very worth it to have her, but parents whose kids are older and moved out tend to forget the daily routines that drive you up a fucking wall. Anyone that tells me not to complain again is getting a free lecture. Or an argument.

I feel the days of my life slipping away. I'm only getting older, and by the time my schedule frees up, I'm afraid I won't have the fire of my youth anymore. I'm also getting pretty sick of this long hair, and I need to be in a band soon to show it off before enough is enough and I chop it all off. Being a stay-at-home mom is hard.

Also Lucy has not been staying in bed for the night bedtime. For the same two or three weeks she's been faking me out during the day naps, she's also been getting up out of bed every night after Megan puts her down. We've got a good solution for this, though--shut the door. She can't open it by herself, cause it's a shitty old door and it sticks shut. So we hear her running around and doing whatever in there, in the dark, while we're breathing easy and watching some fun, adult tv and eating cake and NOT TAKING CARE OF OUR THANKLESS TODDLER. She usually gets to sleep by nine.

This blog started about strollers and turned into me bitching about Lucy not sleeping. I guess I needed to get that out. Now I feel like I should say something nice.

Okay, here's something. Ever since I tried to put her down around noon today and it didn't take, she's been entertaining herself, and I got to type this long ass complaint blog. She's let me do something that interests me. Thank you, Beans. Now I will go play with her and give her her pacifier back and try to get her to nap again. And I will swoon with my love for her as I watch her fall asleep. Seriously, it's a wonderful thing.