Is it cliche for me to post one week about the birth of my newborn son and the next post about the complete and utter lack of sleep one gets living with someone whose been alive for a week? Well I'm sorry for the cliche, but buckle up it's gonna get real here. And you know, the real problem here is the two year old?! What?! Where does she get off waking up three times a night, I mean honestly, she is so thoughtless. So that brings us to the Russian Roulette of parenting, "Tonight, you take the two year old, I'll take the baby." And I only struck this deal because when we split the night at 3:00 am, I had two kids in my lap crying up until 2:58 am at which time they both passed out and slept soundly until 8:00. The universe is out to get me; it sees that I am not in a "Breast Feeding Situation" and so I am saddled with half of the feedings... I tell you I'm so progressive it's disgusting! If I was a father in the 60's, oh, you bet I would be sleeping! Breasts or no breasts I would sliding into my matching top and bottom pajamas and hopping into my own twin bed and sleeping so deep until the smell of bacon mingled with toast wafted up the stairs and under my closed door and into my well-rested nostrils. Sure I'd get cancer from all the smoking, and of course the kids would blow straight through the windshield at the slightest fender bender as there was nothing to stick them to their seats, but those were simpler times...for a man, I suppose...a white man, I suppose again. No, I love my 2012 life. It's better in every way, but I do miss sleep. What do you people who sleep do when you wake? You must have spotless houses and creatively and financially successful lives. I would. If I slept. I would be invincible. And you know, the real problem is that he's so helpless. I mean, honestly, if he were a giraffe, he would be walking by now. Any animal born in the wild knows how to feed themselves. Sure they may have to rummage around to locate their mother's teet, but my son makes no such effort. The only effort he makes is to scream at the top of his lungs, which, again, if he were in the wild, that would be the absolute worst thing to do. I mean, there you are, so helpless and unable to fight off any predator from a cougar to a mushroom, your best strategy would be to lie still and blend in with the forest floor, but no, we scream, we announce (at any time of day or night...mostly night) we are helpless and apparently abandoned so either feed me or eat me, either way, I'M RIGHT HERE! I've been watching the BBC Series
Planet Earth--you remember it was all the rage at Costco a few years back?--well my mother gave it to us for Christmas and I love it, but this last round of watching has only made me more disappointed in the human ability to survive, I mean, we are the most "Evolved" spices on the planet (I put scare quotes around "evolved," so don't get all uppity) and yet we are the most helpless until... when...30? 34? I have had thoughts, as I assemble bottles in the middle of the night, of my two year old fending for herself in the woods somewhere...not that I'm thinking of dropping her off or anything like that, I'm just thinking the same way I wonder how my Jack Russell Terrier could have ever survived as a wild animal before some caveman tamed him with peanut butter treats. I mean honestly, could you imagine:
David Attenborough: "The grass bends slightly in the meadow and the birds grow silent. Something has found its way to the glade. The trees steady their leaves against the wind to listen to the coming threat. The very earth beneath the bending grass holds its breath, frightened. Waiting. Watching. Then, some thoughtless and unknowing creature steps from the shadow. It's a rabbit. Fool. Then again, it was inevitable and perhaps the rabbit knew that. Perhaps he thought if I stay I'm dead for sure, but this way I have a chance, a slight chance true, but if a mistake is made, if a misstep is took I will have a chance. But a mistake is not made nor is it ever, and the rabbit knows this, even in the last moments of his life, as he gasps for life, he knows that no creature, once the beast has made up it's mind, ever escapes the clever and calculating jaws of the forest's greatest predator, the Jack Russel Terrier."
I mean, it's got two human names in his breed name, for crying out loud.
How was it ever wild? So it was these thoughts that lead me to wonder about a band of two year olds emerging from the forest with squirrel pelts hanging from broad leaf diapers, mud and blood spattered across the faces of the tribe who picks their teeth with the bones of some unidentified specimen: perhaps its weakest member, the tattle tale.
This post is like a dream...from what I remember of them. There have been studies done suggesting that sleep deprivation is as bad as alcohol impairment. I can not cite such research, you google it if you want, but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. They have not, however, studied the effects of blogging while sleep deprived...I hope I've helpst.
