Gavin is sick. Lots of snot and coughing. He did go to daycare yesterday (you're welcome, parents of Gavin's friends!), but in our defense we thought he was better. He sure acted like he was. He woke up on Friday morning in such a good mood I half expected him to start singing "Zippity Do Dah" and clicking his heels together. Truth be told, that would have really freaked me out.
Last night while I was waiting for the bus to take me from campus to the commuter lot I was reading Slate.com on my Blackberry, which I so often do, and I came across Shankar Vedantam's "Parents Are Junkies: If parenthood sucks, why do we love it? Because we're addicted." He talks about recent studies that found becoming parents doesn't make people happier. If anything, having kids makes you less happy. But, of course, people still do it. And some people do it more than once (I am one of 5 kids, by the way. WTF Mom and Dad?). He argues that the highs of parenting are like a drug and, like a lab rat receiving a reward for pushing a lever, we endure an awful lot of unpleasantness in between highs. It's totally true. So much of being a mom sucks. I do not like interacting with snot, poop, urine, and spit on a never-ending rotation. I don't like crying and screaming and whining. I do not like the ever-lengthening TO DO list of parenting-related chores. Like right now, for example. Gavin's shoes are out on the deck because while we were playing in the yard he managed to step in dog shit. I need to clean them or throw them away. Those are my options (I'm still weighing them).
But then there's the times when he nuzzles his head into my shoulder and wraps his arms around my neck. Or looks up at me while he's nursing in the morning and smile and wave. Or waking up to his beaming face over mine. There's this voice mail message I have saved where he apparently called my cell phone (he loves to play with the phone). The bulk of the message is just noise, Gavin running around with the phone or whatever. But at the very end before he hangs up, he puts the phone up to his mouth and says, very briefly, "Ah." And I LOVE this message. I play it all the time. It's just this second of my son's voice and I get all warm and fuzzy every time I hear it. So, yeah, addict sounds about right.
Alas, it sounds like Gavin is up from his nap. He sounds very unhappy. I don't think he slept well at all. Coughing kept waking him up. Poor little dude. I suppose it's possible he'll go back to sleep. But I doubt it. God, I would love a nap. Maybe that's what I'll request for Christmas.
Oh, did I mention that the other day he napped for THREE AND A HALF HOURS? This, of course, happened while I wasn't home. Heaven forbid he should sleep even two full hours while I'm watching him. When I got home I was shocked when Stacy said he was still sleeping. "Are you sure he's alive?" I asked. She looked at me in horror. "Don't even say that," she said. "That's not even funny." I responded, "I'm not trying to be funny. Just paranoid and reactionary." And jealous. Definitely jealous. I mean, I love spending time with Gavin, but it's nice to get a break. Especially since that's so rarely an option. I've been exhausted for a few days shy of 16 months now with no end in sight (and, really, thank God for that).
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