F'ing monkey

I have about six different draft posts right now but alas, I thought I'd share a little diddy about parenthood with the MTLs.

So...bedtime rituals have been established since the get-go and honestly, have overall worked out pretty well. Most nights, the Mister and I are sitting down to a quiet, grown-up meal by 7:15 pm. Now, it does bear pointing out that this is because the meals themselves didn't have to be cooked from scratch.they were meals from that delicious stockpile I froze prior to our trip, or from generous friends who made such things as artichoke spinach lasagna, so no real time was spent in preparation.

Ahhh, 7:15 pm how we loved you so. It was quiet. We could sit down. We could eat (and as anyone who knows us in real life can tell you, the MTLs do love to eat!). We could zone out while watching reruns of the Sopranos, or more recently dive into Project Runway (hello? I love me some Tim Gunn).

But lately, the past five nights or so, change has been in the air. No idea what prompted it but I'm fairly certain the babies are in cahoots with each other because they both decided, with no warning to us, to start holding rodeos in their cribs after they were laid down. During the normally peaceful rock in the rockers while drinking a delicious warm bottle of formula they decided to arch and kick and dance and sometimes squeal. They weren't crying, they just weren't relaxing. And thus laying down in the crib just invited more shenanigans.

So yeah, they didn't start off crying, but sort of ended up crying, and the thing is, with two babies, if one cries you freak out and don't want the other to hear and be disrupted so you probably do things a little differently, rush in a little quicker, try to appease the upset baby with, well, pretty much anything at some points.

After the fourth night the Mr. and I were at our wits end (I know, cry me a river). But we just couldn't figure out what went wrong, what was different (nothing!). It was mission critical time yet again, time to lay our daughter down, and she seemed to be ready. The Mr. held his breath and went to lay her in her crib, hoping for no rodeos and a peaceful drift off to a nice deep slumber like she had always done before.

I stood watching in the doorway, having already laid down our son who was mercifully being quiet...we were almost there! Almost there!

And then.

Where is the f'ing monkey? Mr. MTL didn't shout this (of course not!), but he mouthed-shouted and I could clearly make out what he was saying.

The pink Paul Frank sock monkey that our daughter clutches within an inch of its life when she falls asleep. The monkey! Where the eff was the monkey?

I dropped to my all fours and crawled across the room, desperately scanning under the cribs, under the dresser, under the changing table, everywhere, trying to stay under my son's radar (he has quite the ability to sense our presence in the room and then bam! pop up over the bumper pad, which is at once annoying as heck but incredibly cute), and met the Mr, who had laid our daughter down sans monkey and was desperately trying to figure out what to do next.

It felt like minutes, but I'm sure it was only seconds before I saw him belly crawl across the room to their toy storage and yank out another stuff animal, belly crawl back to the crib (remember: we can't let our son see us, hence all the belly crawling) and stuff it quickly into our daughter's arms, hoping beyond hope that she won't know the difference.

Of course I notice, but before it was too late, that the particular stuffed animal he grabbed was a dog. A barking dog, you know, one of those that if you squeeze in the middle you'll be rewarded with a ridiculous yappy bark.

Oi vey.

She clutched the dog within an inch of its life (maybe the monkey wasn't so special after all?) and we collectively exhaled. Of course we were inwardly gasping for breath, you know, from all the strenous belly crawling everywhere.

We slunk out of the room. I spent an hour worrying that that dog would start yapping and all would be lost, but alas, they slept.

We made it to our safe haven of a living room where we scarfed some food and I drank a--you guessed it!--Diet Coke. Ahhh, aspartame and artificial caramel coloring, how you soothe the tired soul.

So I leave you with two pictures:

I told you she loves that monkey, though in this photo she has clearly loosened her death grip.

This makes me happy.