July 18, 2010: Leave a sleeping baby be

Gavin is screaming right now and it's all Stacy's fault. She wanted to take a peek at him sleeping. She wanted me to go with her. I should have said no to both of these things. "Other parents do this all the time," she said, right before opening his door, which gets stuck by the summer humidity. And she got her peek, too. Only it didn't take long after she shuddered open his door for him to wake up. In fact, he woke up and turned his head toward the door right after Stacy walked out, precisely as I was standing alone in the doorway peering through the poorly illuminated bedroom to catch a glimpse of what had, just a nanosecond ago, made Stacy swoon.

No doubt this sent him a very clear message: "Mama D just barged into my room and woke me up. In the middle of the night. For no reason." Understandably, he started to cry and I whirled around and brandished my finger at Stacy, "YOU!" I whisper shouted. "YOU!" She lunged by me and yanked the door shut as quickly and quietly as possible. "You're grounded," I said as Gavin shrieked.

Thankfully the screaming didn't last long. Dude is tired, after all, or he wouldn't have started crying in the first place. But it's hard not to hold my breath every night that he cries from his crib remembering just a few short months ago such an outburst could result in a prolonged sleep interruption for me and for Stacy. He skipped his morning nap today, too, which means he was primed for a potentially rough night.

Gavin's birthday is in two days. His birthday party is on Saturday. We're scrambling (and by "we" I mean Stacy and me. Gavin is preoccupied with other things like running around the house and taking clothes out of the dresser in our room and putting our underwear in the sock drawers and vice versa. Dude's got plenty on his plate) to get the yard ready so it looks like people live here and not just another foreclosed house on our block. But it's hard to get anything done outside with Gavin. Someone has to wrangle while the other person works. And Gavin loves to dump things out. So I end up spending as much time putting weeds back in the gardening bucket as I do pulling the weeds in the first place. We even got him his own bucket, which he likes very much, but he doesn't have the patience to fill it all the way up yet. That's Mama's job, apparently. In any case, I'm hoping that some of my family members will be willing to come by some time this week to help us finish things we've been planning on doing all summer like put wood chips down and pull weeds (though not necessarily in that order). Even if they just hang with Gavin and make sure he doesn't, like, put rocks in his mouth while Stacy and I work that would be great.

Oh, and poison oak alert: Stacy still itches like crazy and new little patches are still cropping up. I told her she is never allowed to go outside again, but have very lax enforcement of said statute since I need her help in the yard.