Chelsea Kaplan’s Musings About Life... After Birth

While most people don’t fret too much over having to spring forward or fall back on account of daylight savings time, parents loathe it. As excited as I am about it not getting dark at 5 PM any more (which means a 5 PM stroll to Starbucks for a Cafe Vanilla Light Frappuccino will not only become a possibility, but a probability), this joy is tempered by the dread of knowing my kid’s sleeping schedule will get messed up.

This morning, as my husband and I predicted, our son rose at around 8:30 instead of his normal 7:30. That wasn’t too bad, except when we met two pairs of unmarried couple friends out for brunch at 11:00, Junior was not in his best shape. Usually we can push his nap back a bit, but today apparently wasn’t the day to attempt to do so. There was lots of banging his cup on the table, writhing around in the high chair and wanting to walk around and play with the stacks of booster seats in the (thankfully, kid-friendly) restaurant. Pretty much he was the kid who before I had kids I used to see in the restaurant and think, “Seriously, those parents need to get a hold of their kid”. My husband and I barely got to chat with our friends, and I’m thinking our kid probably set those four back at least a year in their family planning - or at least reminded the women to take their pill that night.

When we got home, he went down for his nap right away. Though unquestionably exhausted, his nap lasted only 1.5 hours as opposed to his usual 2-3. Let me tell you, that extra 30 minutes to an hour makes a hell of a difference. My husband and I, exhausted after brunch, used this time to nap ourselves. When we heard him begin to make noise, we were both like, “No. Please no. No, no, no! Dude, seriously, are you kidding? Please, for the love of God, go back to sleep!” Our son followed no such instruction. We both groaned, and then I said, “I got him this morning”. Unable to argue with that truth, my husband walked, bleary-eyed, into our kid’s room to get him.

The little guy got pretty cranky this evening too. En route to the Thai restaurant, we parked near a construction vehicle - some sort of forklift, I think. Because of my son’s tractor obsession (to him, all construction equipment falls into the category of “tractor”), we knew he’d be delighted. We were right - you would have thought my kid had seen Michael Jordan - his eyes grew wide and he was filled with glee.  We hung around the tractor for a bit, and then decided it was time to head into the restaurant.

Our son was not so into this decision. He started wailing as soon as we walked away, screaming “Tractor! Tractor!”. We figured it would stop once we got to the restaurant and gave him some food, but we were sorely mistaken. Tears streamed down his face and he kept pleading to return to his beloved “tractor”. Occasionally we’d distract him, but before long he’d bring the t-word back up again. By that time it was 8 :00 PM, which though my husband and I both thought felt like 7:00, clearly our kid was thinking 8:00, his bedtime. He was in full-on “put my ass to sleep” mode and they hadn’t even brought us the Pad Thai. Oy.

The “TRAC-TOR!” continued throughout dinner as my husband and I alternated shoving food in our mouths and attempting to placate our kid with everything from crayons to the plastic flower that sat in a vase on the table (one good did come from the experience: he now knows how to identify the color pink). Eventually, we decided it was time to give up.  Had we been at the Factory, it would have been another story, but the not-especially-kid-friendly Sweet Basil was a different story. I hurriedly paid the bill while my husband took our kid back outside to see the tractor (which, of course, calmed him down completely). After my son was fastened into this car seat, my husband and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes.

“The whole ‘we should have kids’ thing’ - what was up with that?” I asked as we drove home.