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Thursday, April 16, 2015

Like father, like son

"I'm so ready to vege," Andrew said, stumbling out of his office after turning in his prospectus last night.

"Wanna watch a show?" I asked.

"Yeah, but only one episode because I also want to go to bed. I was up way too late last night and then got up at six this morning."

"What time did we go to bed, anyway? I didn't look at the clock when I got up."

"Around three," he said. "Do you even remember moving to the bed?"

"Yes, of course..." I said.

"Oh, that's right. You're not me."

Unless he's awake for a significant time—a couple of hours—Andrew remembers nothing from his night wakings, which is always slightly disconcerting for me when we have a new baby and I send him to do anything for the baby. Usually I just do all the night time stuff because waking Andrew up is quite impossible in the first place and then I really can't trust that he'll do everything right (eg. put a diaper back on the baby and put the baby back in bed (unimportant things like that)) before he returns to bed himself. And then even if he does manage to do what I ask him (which is usually just, "Bring me the baby,") when I thank him for getting up with the baby in the night he says, "I got up with the baby?"

The baby thing is just an example (as well as something I'm gearing up to deal with in a month and a half) but pretty much any time he gets up for anything he doesn't remember it.

And it's been a longstanding understanding between us that he's not responsible for anything he says before he showers. Because—I believe it was in our first year of marriage—he once told me to, "Leave me alone, idiot," or something like that when I was waking him up in the morning and then could not figure out why I was upset with him later in the morning (after he'd had his shower).

He's since, for the most part, grown out of calling people names (carryover from childhood, I guess (something that happens when you get married in your early twenties)) but I still don't take anything he says seriously until after he's showered for the day because chances are he isn't really awake before then.


But that's not me. I remember waking up. I remember what I do. And I take forever to fall asleep again once I get back into bed (unless I'm pregnant and it's 3:00 in the morning).

Benjamin, on the other hand, seems to finally have taken after Andrew in this regard. We're still waking him up to go potty before we go to bed and he—miraculously—falls right back asleep. He used to wake up and then be awake forever (which is part of the reason we decided to put nighttime potty training on hold) but not anymore. Now he has no recollection of being woken up to go potty.

In fact, he's so out of it when he wakes up that he doesn't even remember extended force-wakings.

The other night I went in to take him potty and found that I was a little too late—he'd wet the bed. So I got him up anyway, walked him to the bathroom, helped him onto the potty so he could finish going if he needed to, pulled off his wet jammies, walked him back to his room, found clean underwear and jammies, helped him into them, put a towel down on his bed (because change the sheets in the middle of the night—are you kidding me?) and then tucked him in again.

He was up for a while but went back to sleep well enough.

In the morning he came to find me and the first thing out of his mouth was, "What? Why me wearing these jammy pants? Where are my uzzy pants? These pants don't match!"

"Benjamin, I helped you change into new jammy pants last night because you wet the bed, remember?" I said.

He felt around and with a very confused look on his face said, "Huh? Huh? Me not wet! Me dry!"

He had no recollection of anything that had happened the night before. Just like his daddy.

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