There are times — many, many times in the life of a mother of two children under three — when you know that whatever it is that is making you cry is a normal part of parenthood. The incident that has driven you to tears of despair is, you could easily tell yourself, a positive sign that your child is developing properly. No other parent has ever cried in similar circumstances, you may even lie to yourself, so buck up.
But you will cry anyhow, and you will feel good and sorry for yourself as you do it.
By all rights, my latest bout of tears should not have been induced by the simple fact of Lily awakening twice in one night. Because who would cry over something most other mothers of infants I know take as a fact of life? And what sort of ingrate would not be able to take a few days out of the five-and-a-half months of her daughter’s life when she loses a little more than a little sleep?
By all rights, in other words, I should instead have been crying when I was sitting on the dirty floor of a Target bathroom at eight o’clock last night, my baby strapped to me in the Ergo, the toilet paper dispenser empty, and my son’s brand-new Big Boy underpants, shall we say, soiled.
But I didn’t cry then. In that moment, I could find quite a lot of humor in just watching myself. It’s in the middle of the night that my outlook on life is more than a little bit less inclined toward laughter.
Big Boy Underpants and the Joys of the Perils of Growing Up
Our decision to get Jake his Big Boy underpants signaled one of those major changes in strategy slightly more available to parents than to political candidates. Either way, whether you can get it away with it depends on your audience.
In this case, ours is still a little too young to notice the dance of manipulation we perform just above his head (both figuratively and literally). Hence, it was easy enough to outfox him at his own You Can’t Outfox Me game.
In particular, Jake was no longer interested in the carrots of potty training we had been dangling so tantalizingly in front of him for the past several weeks. Stickers for peeing on the potty? Better get something new already because there are only so many times a boy can get excited at picking out the same shark from a cheap pack of repeating sea creatures. Giddy applause from Mom and Dad for every successful use of the potty? Really, how long does that stay exciting? A promise of wearing a pull-up to school if only he will pee on the potty in the morning? At some point, a smart boy realizes that you can pee in a pull-up pretty much the same way you can pee in a diaper, so why bother taking time out to use a toilet or even, for that matter, to choose the pull-up over the diaper? And that promise that as soon as he came home in a dry pull up we’d go pick out Big Boy underpants? It became a mantra that was more pleasing to him in the repetition than in the promise of execution.
When even the pink pull-ups I fortuitously bought on sale — pink being Jake’s stated preference for the Big Boy underpants he would theoretically one day own — failed to lessen his increasingly strong grip on his diaper, I knew it was time for a major turnaround. Sort of like that day all those Senators who voted for the Iraq war noticed that public opinion had shifted in the opposite direction.
And so, with a great sense of excitement, I arrived early to pick Jake up from school on Monday.
“We’re going to buy Big Boy underpants!” I cried, terribly excited with my plan. “Just the two of us!”
“Is Lily coming?” Jake asked.
“No,” I said, smiling as if to clue him in to the privilege of being an only child for an hour or so. “Just you and me.”
“I want Lily to come,” Jake answered, ever the good big brother.
“No you don’t,” I promised, my spirits mildly dampened by this off-topic discussion. “It will be so much better if we go together, without Lily. Besides,” I added with the lamest checkmate ever, “she’s sleeping right now and we don’t want to wake her up.”
Jake checked in with me several times on the way to the mall to make sure Lily was still sleeping. I assured him she was, even though I had no idea whether I was telling him the truth, promising myself the whole time that he really does love spending time alone with me, he just wouldn’t realize it until we were picking out Big Boy underpants together. Just the two of us.
When we arrived at the mall Lily was indeed quickly forgotten. But only because to get to the store we had to descend an escalator that plopped us practically into the very center of the play area.
What genius marketing executive blocked that store space? I wondered. It was all I could do to drag my child past the playground that generated exactly zero income for the store. Apparently, he was utterly unfazed by memories of children who exceeded the height limit years ago barreling past him to push unsuspecting boys like himself off the otherwise seemingly harmless play bridge.
But, finally, there we were, in front of a dazzling array of Big Boy underpants. At least, it was dazzling to me. Part of the dazzle being due to the fact that I had had my pupils dilated for an eye exam earlier in the day and the bright lights of the store turned the corners of everything I looked at hazy and diamond-like, as if someone had put one of those groovy disco-lenses on the camera and I was trapped in a ’70’s sitcom.
“These have footballs on them!” I crowed, plainly even more excited than Jake. Though, to his credit, he was getting pretty into this excursion.
I peered blindly at the package, feeling for all the world like a naked mole rat come to the surface at high noon.
I must have looked like one too, because within seconds a kind saleswoman approached to ask if we needed help. I answered quite honestly that I did and stood back as she shuffled through package after package looking for Jake’s size.
“These are the only ones we have.” She held up a pack of plain boxer briefs, one white, one gray, and not a sports symbol in sight. My heart fell.
“I want pink,” Jake reminded me.
Aha. Pink they had in spades. Lots of little girl undies with hearts and polka dots. And a tiny satin bow on the front that for some reason was the one and only thing that made me uncomfortable with the concept of buying them for Jake.
But buy them I did — one pack anyhow. Along with two of the boxer briefs. Which, it turned out when Jake tried them on after we got home, were wildly, incredibly, perfect Little Man, CUTE.
Jake paraded around the house in them all evening, peeing in the potty with great care. “We’re going to practice with these at home,” I explained. “And in a few days you can wear them to school.”
Jake was perfectly amenable to this plan. Until the next morning when he insisted on wearing his Big Boy underpants to school. Time for another change in plan. I was feeling a bit like a member of Dick Cheney’s staff.
“He says he wants to wear his underpants,” I said apologetically to his wary teacher. As if to prove I had tried, I waved a pink pull-up at her. “I told him every time he pees in the potty he gets to keep wearing his underpants. But if he doesn’t, he gets the pull-up.”
Not surprisingly, women who work day in and day out with two- and three-year-olds are amazingly accommodating. And so, with his teacher’s permission, I left Jake on the playground pulling down his khaki shorts to show his friends his Big Boy underpants.
The Target Potty Dash
Somewhat more surprisingly, Jake was still wearing the same khaki shorts when I arrived to pick him up at the end of the day.
“You stayed dry!” I cried, trying to sound less surprised than I felt.
Jake looked at me like I was stating the most obvious thing he’d ever heard. He even looked a little bored when I exclaimed over the number of stickers that suddenly graced his potty chart. “Wow!” I said. “Do you think you can go again?”
“I don’t have to,” he said with the sort of whine that makes a mother doubt every word she has just heard.
“We’re going in the car,” I warned, picturing a soggy car seat and wondering how exactly one is supposed to clean those foam inserts that are plainly part of the safety design and hoping that anyone who would design a child safety device would factor in the possibility of a little urine coming into play.
Jake reluctantly sat on the potty. He made appropriate sounds of exertion. But he made no urine.
I began to question the plan Mike and I had hatched to do a post-school Target run so as to lessen the pressure on me to do the six million things I am always trying to get done during the time I have rather optimistically set aside for my work.
But Jake made it to pick Daddy up without an accident. And to the parking lots of what turned out to be a scary Mexican restaurant (Mike’s report) and a cheap Italian place that smelled funny (my assessment) before settling on a quick dinner at Urban Burrito. He made it through a meal of rice and beans with the beans picked out and through what Mike sighed was a fruitless trip to the bathroom. And, Mike also told me, while I sat in the Target parking lot, Jake also went potty-less through two trips to the Target bathroom.
Lily and I caught up to the boys as Mike was eyeing coffee makers, carefully (I could see) adjudging each one far inferior to the centuries-old pot he has had to abandon since the rubber gasket that needs replacing can not be replaced.
“We’ll go ahead and grab the toothpaste,” I said, consulting our list and calculating whether we could make it home before Lily’s self-selected 8:30 final bedtime meltdown. I grabbed the cart in which Jake sat amusing himself by “fishing” with a long green necklace of Mardi Gras beads, and pushed it across the store.
We were parked somewhere in the vicinity of the toothpaste when Jake announced with great imperative that he had to go potty.
I hesitated for a nanosecond as I took in the tableau of my boy clutching his pants, the sixteen-pound baby strapped to me, the absence of my husband, and the roughly two city blocks lying between us and the bathroom. Jake began to cry.
“Hang on!” I cried, springing into action. “We can make it!”
“I’m pooping,” Jake insisted, winding up all his energy for a cry rather than the necessary sprint across the store.
“You’re fine!” I insisted cheerily. I grabbed him by the hand. “Let’s run!”
This, it turns out, was hilarious, this game of me and Jake running hand-in-hand past aisles of groceries and school supplies and even a kid from his class. I figured if the mother recognized me she would surely also recognize an emergency situation and excuse me for not stopping to chat.
As we rounded the check-out stands Jake went down on the floor in a fit of giggles, nearly pulling me and Lily with him. “I’m not playing,” I said before I realized that actually I was, at least to the extent that it took his mind off of pooping. “You’ve got to get up!”
Feeling like nothing so much as a character in a bad disaster movie being chased by a giant CGI boulder mowing down the hapless Target shoppers in its path, I pulled Jake up and started running again. He laughed hysterically. Lily, bobbing up and down in her Ergo, did too.
“I see it!” I yelled, trying to enjoy the moment but also desperately aware that one of us had to keep her eye on the prize lest Jake’s intestines win the race.
We dashed inside the thankfully empty bathroom and made it to the wheelchair accessible stall — the only one I felt could possibly accommodate the three of us in our current configuration.
Squatting with a baby in front of me and a quick prayer of thanks to my years of yoga, I pulled down Jake’s pants and hoisted him onto the potty, holding him balanced close to the edge with the superhuman strength only a mother whose child is precipitously close to falling into a public toilet can muster.
“It’s on my leg,” Jake whined.
“That’s okay,” I said, noting that he was correct. “We’ll get it. Just let the rest out.”
“I can’t,” Jake whined again. “It’s there.”
I tried to look without looking enough to get groced out. “We can clean that up,” I said brightly. “It’s just a little. You can poop the rest in the toilet.”
“I want my dad,” Jake started to cry.
Which, by all rights, is when I should have started to cry as well. There I was, crouched on a none-too-clean public bathroom floor, trying to help my two-and-a-half-year-old poop while simultaneously hoping my five-and-a-half-month-old wasn’t finding anything to put in her mouth, and my boy preferred the assistance of his father.
“Daddy’s not here,” I said in what I hoped wasn’t a too unkind voice. I reached for some toilet paper. There was none.
This was the moment when Jake heard some of those words I have vowed never to utter in front of him. Under the circumstances, I figured they would be less psychologically scarring and more appropriate to the circumstances than my tears.
“Come on,” I said, hauling him to another stall with toilet paper. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
By the time I balanced him on the changing station to remove his soiled Big Boy underpants Jake was finding the fun in the situation. And, since he seemed okay with having that fun with me instead of his dad, I was too. There is, after all, definitely something funny about deciding that your child will go commando and resourcefully using one of the sandwich bags buried in our abandoned shopping cart to store the no longer wearable undies.
In fact, as Commando Jake and I held hands on our hike back across the expanse of Target through which we had dashed minutes before laughing and trying not to poop, I found myself having real fun. Fun with my contingent of young kids and the ways in which they can complicate a simple trip to Target. And fun with the creativity such moments inspire in a mother who has decided to laugh instead of cry. Even though I was carrying poop-stained Big Boy underpants in my free hand.
Also Letting Yourself Cry
I’ve just spent all this time writing about the Poop in the Target incident that made me laugh, yet I now recall that this post was supposed to be about crying at four a.m. But who wants to write — or read — about that?
The most notable thing about my crying at four a.m. is that I let myself. “You’ve been lucky she’s been a good sleeper to this point,” I told myself. But I didn’t berate myself for feeling unhappy that she no longer is. I thought about the mom of a year-old boy in Lily’s class who is still up every few hours with him. She seems awfully cheerful, able to accept her lot. A better mother, in other words.
Only I didn’t tell myself that either.
Instead, I told myself that I plainly wanted to cry, so go ahead. Let it go — both at the time and afterward, when I’d rather write about Jake pooping in Target.
Nor do I feel inclined to analyze what it is that makes me crumble every time. Why I can handle crises and tantrums and a pretty high level of, “Mommy, stop talking!” while I’m trying to have a conversation with Mike yet a baby who wants to be held twice in one night sends me over the edge.
I know, in fact, that I have trouble with this developing pattern because it lacks a pattern. I have become accustomed to Lily’s feeding times and sleeping times and to awakening just once and having that be enough sleep for me. And now Lily’s feeding times and sleeping times are shifting. She is hungry but just beginning to cotton to solids. She needs sleep but not as much as she used to. She is, in short, growing up.
And I love this. I love her new level of attentiveness to her surroundings. I love it when she tips over Jake’s cereal bowl because it is within her reach from her perch in the Bumbo chair on the dining room table. I love that she talks constantly and knows how to roll the rollerball on her play station and is fascinated by the flashing lights on her baby “laptop.” I even love knowing that within the next few weeks she will be on a regular schedule of solids and then maybe, just maybe, will start sleeping through the night.
But I don’t love getting there. Which sounds distinctly un-yoga-like of me. I suppose we all have to work on appreciating the journey in our own ways, and this is mine. I need to feel gratitude for the formless moments when I have no structure to depend on. When I can’t turn to my mind to offer me a security blanket sense of where I am.
In short, I need to cry when I need to cry. And when the morning light hits my wakeful girl’s face I need to feel ready to be flooded all over yet again with how her smile turns my day into something bright and full of promise.
Being Fully in the Shifts
One big unknown shift in Lily’s life is her morning nap. It has, for months, been sufficiently long and peaceful for me to sneak in a yoga practice and sometimes even a shower. And then it wasn’t.
I found myself annoyed with her for interrupting my practice, despondent at the lack of space in my day to do something wholly for me, and spinning swiftly away from the receding hope of having a life of my own again soon.
So I did something radical. I switched my yoga time. A couple of days ago, feeling odd at the mid-day hour, I spread out my yoga mat in an empty house. Lily was at school and though my time before picking her up was limited it was my time. When better to practice yoga?
It still seems strange, sitting here writing during Lily’s morning nap, showered and dressed when I haven’t done my yoga yet. And I have these constant moments of wondering if I jumped the gun, seeing as this is the second day she’s topping an hour again.
But I also know that the past two days when I’ve practiced in the afternoon, in time set aside for me, I have loved it. I’m feeling more energetic than I have in months. I’ve seen my pre-pregnancy practice coming back to me, like a hound that’s had a long adventure away and returns to snuggle its head in its owner’s lap with a big sigh of rightness. I’ve enjoyed the sight of the mid-day sun outside my window and the warm-up of a walk to Lily’s preschool, the sense of having already run some errands and answered some emails. And, mostly, the feeling of being in my space with only me and the world and the moment.
So I invite you to shift your structures. Choose a different time for yoga or meditation. Eat lunch at a different hour. Go to bed earlier so you can awaken with the gray still of morning.
And, if you’d like to incorporate this sort of shifting into your asana practice, try one of the following variations:
Adho Mukha Vrksasana (Handstand) Variations
Laghuvajrasana (Advanced Ustrasana (Camel))
Prasarita Padottanasana (Standing Straddle Fold) Variations
Urdhva Danurasana (Upward Facing Bow) Up and Down the Wall