Jasper – Page 4 – Her Bad Mother

2 Feb

About Last Night

Jasper goes to playschool a couple of days a week. He loves it – loves it – and he knows exactly what days he’s scheduled to go. He toddles down the stairs on those mornings and heads straight for his coat and boots, which he tries to tug on over his pajamas.

SKOO! (School!) he yells. RUSSELL! ELLA! (friends) GO! GO! GO!

Yesterday was a school day. He’d been up throughout the previous night with a cough, and he’d felt a little warm at times the day before, but there are always bugs going around this time of year, and he seemed okay in the morning, and in any case, there he was, clutching his coat and boots and yelling skoo!

I hesitated, for a minute, maybe two. He didn’t feel warm, but he did have a cough, and he had been so, so sick before Christmas… but no, he wanted to go. And I wanted him to go. I had work to do. So I took him to school.

Some hours later, my phone rang, and the voice on the other end was a little panicked. Could I come right away? Jasper wasn’t well, he was hot, really hot, sweating through his clothes, his temperature 105 and climbing, and obviously in pain, and coughing, badly. I dropped what I was doing and ran straight there, not bothering to put on socks or scarf or hat or gloves, not stopping to lock the door, not stopping for anything. I just ran. And as I ran – the very short distance from where I was to where he was – I berated myself a hundred times with every step. I should have kept him home. I shouldn’t have taken him to school. I shouldn’t have let what was convenient and easy trump what was right.

72 Comments

31 Jan

CBS Hates Babies. Pass It On.

by Catherine

Canada, Jasper, Opinions

I don’t know about you, but I think that my child makes a far slicker Horatio Caine than does David Caruso, who, let’s face it, is a hack. But CBS doesn’t care if my baby is an undiscovered Horatio Cane-impersonating genius, because CBS hates babies. Canadian babies, mostly, but also just babies, as a class, because they won’t let babies or Canadians – and certainly not Canadian babies – enter their Horatio Caine impersonation contest, which, seriously, is a crime against babies and also lovers of CSI Miami and anybody who writes baby-centric Horatio Caine fanfic. This is an outrage, you guys.

1 Comment

18 Jan

A Good Birth

by Catherine

Fearless, Jasper, Opinions, PPD, Pregnancy, Rants

When I was pregnant with Jasper, I asked my doctor for a c-section.

Can I have a c-section?, I asked.

No, she said.

I had been going through early labor for weeks. It was three weeks or so before my due date, but bio-physical ultrasounds were logging me at well over a week overdue based on Jasper’s size. Jasper, according to ultrasound measurements, probably weighed close to nine pounds. And I still had three weeks to go.

I was a little freaked out.

126 Comments

11 Jan

Psst, Shhh, Hey: WE’RE SLEEPING

by Catherine

Jasper, Sleep, The Gods

The boy is sleeping in his own bed. The boy is sleeping in his own bed. THE BOY. IS SLEEPING. IN HIS OWN BED.

And I’m not even afraid of incurring the wrath of the sleep gods by saying so. Well, mostly not. I may need to sacrifice some stuffed barnyard creature as a precautionary measure, and I am certainly going to be knocking any all things wood-derived and I’m going to keep the victorious fist-pumps to a minimum until we’ve got this sleep thing conquered, but – let’s all keep our voices down here – I’m pretty sure that we can conquer it, the wrath of the gods notwithstanding.

65 Comments

6 Jan

Jasper Bakes A Cake

by Catherine

Jasper

There's really nothing much to add, here, except for maybe to point out that while Jasper does say CAKE once or twice in this video, he also says CAT - the giveaway is the...

0 Comments

31 Dec

The Never-Ending Story

by Catherine

Dad, Emilia, Faith, Family, Fearless, Heavy, Jasper, Mush, Uncategorized

The question was: what story are you telling yourself right now? (And, cough can you give yourself permission to change the ending?) The answer was: this year, this decade, is ending in sadness. This...

1 Comment

4 Dec

Next Time, I’m Keeping My Mouth Shut.

by Catherine

Jasper, Sleep, The Gods, the gods hate me

I knew that the gods smite for lesser things than overt celebrations of toddlers sleeping through the night. I knew this, and yet I celebrated. And sure enough, the gods, they smote, and Jasper...

0 Comments

3 Dec

Praise The Sleep Gods And Pass The Cookies

by Catherine

Anxiety, Jasper, Sleep

OH SWEET LORD HE SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT. (please gods don't smite me for celebrating this. please please please and thank you.)...

51 Comments

1 Dec

To Sleep, Perchance To Have Some Small Person Yank The Hairs Out Of Your Head

by Catherine

Jasper, Motherhood, Sleep

I have a confession to make: when I said that I was giving up on any kind of sleep training, I meant it, but I was also kind of hoping in, some small dark...

0 Comments

30 Nov

Go Tell The Spartans

by Catherine

Jasper, Sleep

I give up. I surrender. The battle has been fought. It has been lost.

We have tried everything, pretty much, to get Jasper to stay asleep in his own bed. Which is to say, we have tried everything within the limits of our physical and emotional endurance. We made a final push this weekend, a cry-it-out effort to hold the pass of our bedroom door and defend the peace of our bed, but to no avail. The boy found his way around our defenses and, like Leonidas at Thermopylae, we held our ground, we tried to hold our ground, but our forces were no match for his cries and his pleas and his Dadda Dadda Dadda Dadda MAMA MAMA MUM! And so we fell, and so we give up.

88 Comments

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