Only I’m not calling them time-outs. It is now Relax Time at the House. Everyone who has spent a whole day, from start to finish, with a child will know exactly what I’m talking about. You know that special time of day, somewhere north of lunch but still south of dinner, when everything goes from simple chaos to sheer hell? Kids are tired, parents are tired of kids being tired, but nobody can stop doing. I. Am. Right. There.

My back is still hurting, but I expected that. I hurt it on Thursday and didn’t go to urgent care until yesterday. Prescription-strength anti-inflammatory=much better, thanks. But of course, it still hurts quite a bit and I’m not as spry as usual. The cheetahs (my kids) know the gazelle is still wounded and are taking full advantage. Hubby went to some kind of Ruby-on-Rails (?) geekery today after my final, so I’m flying solo this afternoon.

So anyway. I found myself absolutely screaming like a fish-wife at the kids. Monkey was driving his plasma car around and picking on his sister; Pumpkin apparently found a box of check stubs and was gleefully throwing them about the House. And Monkey makes sound effects to accompany his fertile imagination, very loud sound effects. Finally it got to be too much; I was afraid I was going to burst a vein with all the yelling. To calm everyone down, mostly myself, I instituted a new tradition: Relax Time.

About the time Pumpkin was born, Monkey went on a nap strike and I have not been able to get him to take regular naps since. And now Pumpkin has decided that naps are for the birds, and I’m not the boss of her, and she’s ready to do everything herself, and I can just take a flying leap about that whole nap-business. So there. The upshot-I don’t get one single moment of quiet until both are asleep at night and by then I’m either studying or falling asleep myself. Oh, they do get quiet sometimes, but that’s when they’re up to no good. I’ll hear these horrific crashes that sound like the walls are falling down only to find that Pumpkin has trashed her room like a rock star. But the mysterious silences are even worse. There’s no predicting what they can come up with in the future, but so far the silence have meant: toddler eating crayons, toddler and preschooler flooding kitchen or bathroom, toddler destroying preschooler’s train set, all items of clothing painstakingly removed from closet and thrown on the floor, playing in the toilet, and the ever-popular throwing of the feces.

Today, being injured and all, I had to have at least a few minutes of peace. Minutes when I didn’t have to drag my aching bones up, minutes when I didn’t have to talk or correct or yell, minutes when I didn’t have to worry. Ah, worry, a mother’s faithful, dreadful companion. To be able to show worry the door, at least for a short time, we all had Relax Time. Both of the kids had to lay in their beds. They didn’t have to sleep-they could read books or play quietly with toys-but they had to stay in their beds for at least 20 minutes. Monkey especially needed it-he had the worst dark under-eye circles I have ever seen.

After Relax Time, they picked out a movie and had a snack. And they’ve both been, if not calm, at least calmer ever since. Pumpkin even fell asleep on the floor while watching a movie. So Relax Time will be a permanent fixture in our days. And maybe, just sometimes, Relax Time will turn into the ever-elusive Nap Time.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 26th, 2008 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Kids' Room, Living, Mother of Invention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.