Bedtime at the Everett house is a countdown into madness. There are declarations made with lots of hand gestures and foot stomping, uncontrollable weeping, bargaining and outright pleading. And all of that happens before the kids get involved.
Every night, my husband and I play a game of high stakes rock, paper, scissors to see who gets to tell the kids it's time for jammies. "Best 2 out of 3.... Dang it! Okay, 3 out of 5.... BLAST!" If I had my way, we'd just play R-P-S all night long. ".... Best 31 of 60?"
Because of the consequences, the loser has a much more defeated posture than that of someone who has just lost a children's game, for the announcement of 'jammie time' causes different reactions in each of the boys. None of those reactions are anything to make you want to volunteer for the job.
Jack's response to the alert of jammie time is both a physical and an emotional one. His body goes into an immediate boneless state that sends him crashing to the floor in a desperate anguished mass of whininess. While he writhes on the ground in protest of going to bed, he demands answers to such questions as: "Why is bedtime right now?" and "Why is everything so hard??" Once he regains limb strength and function (after numerous threats and growls from us), he staggers down the hall to his room to look for the dreaded nightwear. We can still hear him murmuring against us though. "I wasn't done with today. I still had things to do. I don't want to go to bed! This is cheating." Cheating! As if. Cheating would be my setting the clocks ahead an hour so that we could get this insanity over with earlier. I've been more than fair... But I'm not going to pretend that the idea of cheating hasn't crossed my mind more than a couple of dozen times. Tonight.
By saying "Guys, it's time for jammies" we've caused short term memory loss for Mitch. He turns to go to his room, but never makes it more than a few steps. You can actually see him forget. His footsteps slow and his head comes up to scan the room as though he's looking for a reminder of what had set him motion. This is our cue for a gentle nudge: "Mitch. Jammies." His response is always one of confusion. He looks at us like we've never met and repeats the word in a lost tourist sort of way: "Jammies?..." The tone is like he's asking for directions to the loo, but isn't sure if he's got the wordage right or not. Then he wanders off in the general direction of his bedroom. If one of us doesn't follow to hound him into the ground with instruction, he will go off course very quickly. He has been found in various stages of undress while in almost every scenario you can imagine a four year old getting into, while we naively thought he was putting his pajamas on. Jumping on my bed in his underwear, building a lego tower with his jammie bottoms on his head, reading a book with only one arm still in his shirt, and wearing a complete pirate ensemble are just some of the recent scenarios. To be honest, he doesn't usually get away with it for very long because Jack is a firm believer in equality in misery and tells us pretty early on that Mitch is off track again.
Henry's reaction to jammie time is the most exhausting, which is why we leave him in his day clothes until the very last moment. He literally gets dumped in the crib as soon as the zipper on his sleepers hits his chin. It's really the only way we can all survive. You see, the second that Jack hits the floor in a puddle of drama and Mitch starts aimlessly wandering, Henry begins his evade and antagonize routine. He runs all over the house in a serpentine fashion, waving his arms hysterically and screaming baby babble. You know those computer programs that translate the words into English as they are spoken? I'm positive that if we were to use one of those while Henry is in full on jammie mode, we'd hear something pretty close to: "You'll have to catch me first, suckers!" He steals the other boys pajamas and runs away with them waving over his shoulder like a flag of glory, enticing his brothers to join him in his fight against the dictatorship of Mom and Dad. If we were to attempt to enforce jammie time at this juncture, we'd kill ourselves. The floors are much too slick to try to run a baby to ground; he's got a really low center of gravity and can book it around corners much faster than we can. If, by some small miracle, we caught him without injuring ourselves, we'd then have to wrestle him into his sleep wear. I don't know if you've ever tried to dress a baby that didn't want to be dressed, but I imagine it's something not unlike shoving an angry octopus into a tea cozy. It just isn't an activity you want to do. So, we wait him out. By the time we have repaired Jack's faith in life and the promise of a new tomorrow, reeled Mitch in from whatever world he's currently touring, helped brush teeth; then have an impromptu lecture on the importance of flushing the toilet every time, Henry is usually winding down from his 'death to tyrants' rampage and we once again have the upper hand. This is when we make our move. One of us gets his head and talks him down while the other parent changes diaper and clothes like we are in the rodeo. Baby jammie-ing, a timed two man event.
People make fun of us that we go to bed at 8:30, but we don't care. You do what you have to do in order to survive. We crawl into bed with groans of relief and delight that we made it through another night, while over the baby monitor we listen to the sound of the children laughing. Why you little....
Every night, my husband and I play a game of high stakes rock, paper, scissors to see who gets to tell the kids it's time for jammies. "Best 2 out of 3.... Dang it! Okay, 3 out of 5.... BLAST!" If I had my way, we'd just play R-P-S all night long. ".... Best 31 of 60?"
Because of the consequences, the loser has a much more defeated posture than that of someone who has just lost a children's game, for the announcement of 'jammie time' causes different reactions in each of the boys. None of those reactions are anything to make you want to volunteer for the job.
Jack's response to the alert of jammie time is both a physical and an emotional one. His body goes into an immediate boneless state that sends him crashing to the floor in a desperate anguished mass of whininess. While he writhes on the ground in protest of going to bed, he demands answers to such questions as: "Why is bedtime right now?" and "Why is everything so hard??" Once he regains limb strength and function (after numerous threats and growls from us), he staggers down the hall to his room to look for the dreaded nightwear. We can still hear him murmuring against us though. "I wasn't done with today. I still had things to do. I don't want to go to bed! This is cheating." Cheating! As if. Cheating would be my setting the clocks ahead an hour so that we could get this insanity over with earlier. I've been more than fair... But I'm not going to pretend that the idea of cheating hasn't crossed my mind more than a couple of dozen times. Tonight.
By saying "Guys, it's time for jammies" we've caused short term memory loss for Mitch. He turns to go to his room, but never makes it more than a few steps. You can actually see him forget. His footsteps slow and his head comes up to scan the room as though he's looking for a reminder of what had set him motion. This is our cue for a gentle nudge: "Mitch. Jammies." His response is always one of confusion. He looks at us like we've never met and repeats the word in a lost tourist sort of way: "Jammies?..." The tone is like he's asking for directions to the loo, but isn't sure if he's got the wordage right or not. Then he wanders off in the general direction of his bedroom. If one of us doesn't follow to hound him into the ground with instruction, he will go off course very quickly. He has been found in various stages of undress while in almost every scenario you can imagine a four year old getting into, while we naively thought he was putting his pajamas on. Jumping on my bed in his underwear, building a lego tower with his jammie bottoms on his head, reading a book with only one arm still in his shirt, and wearing a complete pirate ensemble are just some of the recent scenarios. To be honest, he doesn't usually get away with it for very long because Jack is a firm believer in equality in misery and tells us pretty early on that Mitch is off track again.
Henry's reaction to jammie time is the most exhausting, which is why we leave him in his day clothes until the very last moment. He literally gets dumped in the crib as soon as the zipper on his sleepers hits his chin. It's really the only way we can all survive. You see, the second that Jack hits the floor in a puddle of drama and Mitch starts aimlessly wandering, Henry begins his evade and antagonize routine. He runs all over the house in a serpentine fashion, waving his arms hysterically and screaming baby babble. You know those computer programs that translate the words into English as they are spoken? I'm positive that if we were to use one of those while Henry is in full on jammie mode, we'd hear something pretty close to: "You'll have to catch me first, suckers!" He steals the other boys pajamas and runs away with them waving over his shoulder like a flag of glory, enticing his brothers to join him in his fight against the dictatorship of Mom and Dad. If we were to attempt to enforce jammie time at this juncture, we'd kill ourselves. The floors are much too slick to try to run a baby to ground; he's got a really low center of gravity and can book it around corners much faster than we can. If, by some small miracle, we caught him without injuring ourselves, we'd then have to wrestle him into his sleep wear. I don't know if you've ever tried to dress a baby that didn't want to be dressed, but I imagine it's something not unlike shoving an angry octopus into a tea cozy. It just isn't an activity you want to do. So, we wait him out. By the time we have repaired Jack's faith in life and the promise of a new tomorrow, reeled Mitch in from whatever world he's currently touring, helped brush teeth; then have an impromptu lecture on the importance of flushing the toilet every time, Henry is usually winding down from his 'death to tyrants' rampage and we once again have the upper hand. This is when we make our move. One of us gets his head and talks him down while the other parent changes diaper and clothes like we are in the rodeo. Baby jammie-ing, a timed two man event.
People make fun of us that we go to bed at 8:30, but we don't care. You do what you have to do in order to survive. We crawl into bed with groans of relief and delight that we made it through another night, while over the baby monitor we listen to the sound of the children laughing. Why you little....
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