Parenthood has its trials as well as its joys and, perhaps because it’s February, during the coldest and snowiest winter in a generation, I’ll briefly touch upon the former. After our Maggie got through her latest bout of teething, we enjoyed a settled patch when she would go to bed along with the twins and permit us to sleep through the night. Amy’s schedule of evening meetings slackened over Christmas, so we were on a bit of a streak.
No more. Maggie’s throwing in the spanner by getting up around 2 a.m. and insisting on sleeping in our bed. I could give her a bottle and plunk her back in the crib but she’d yell the house down and Amy has work, the twins have to get up for preschool … Maggie’s a real doll but she does like to sleep horizontally so she can kick one parent while poking the other. This is preferable to other maneuvers like sudden head-butts and headboard lunges. We haven’t been sleeping much and Amy’s meetings have resumed with a vengeance. This leaves Dad bathing the cacophonous threesome solo. Henry and Libby have death struggles nightly over a blue “whale” (dolphin) which they both fiercely covet; and Maggie is usually shrieking because the twins are crowding or ignoring her. They often all want out at the same time and Libby thinks it’s a lark to run naked and sopping wet through the bedrooms while slamming doors.
While browsing The Atlantic on my lifeguard chair (toilet seat), I read an article about the joys of retreating from the world behind the doors of a monastery. I am nominally a Catholic but Francis X. Rocca, in “The Caudillo’s Cloister,” assures the less than devout that “[a]s it happens, monasteries are commonly accessible to outsiders, and always have been. In his seminal Rule for the religious life, the sixth-century Saint Benedict of Nursia enjoined his followers to “let all guests that come be received like Christ Himself.” Sounds like a plan a half-hour before bedtime.
Posted with permission from A Dad's Notes
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