Sleep Routine

Here’s how it goes for M-ito:

Pee.

Wash hands.

Brush Teeth.

Get undressed.

Get into PJs.

Find two books to read.

Get into bed.

Jump around.

Get asked, then yelled at to settle down.

Get under the covers.

Read one book.

Read second book.

Turn out the lights.

Turn on night lights.

Turn down request to put on more night lights (any more would make the room look like a stadium ready for a night game.

M-ito asks for a drink of water.

M-ito drinks and drinks and drinks.

M-ito makes imaginary creatures with his fingers and hands beneath the covers.

M-ito says, “I’m thirsty.”

Mom-ita says, “Close your eye and go to sleep.”

M-ito says, “But I can move my legs, right? That’s okay? Because you know my legs feel like they have to move and I can’t go to sleep unless they can move.”

Mom-ita says, “Yes, your legs can move. But your head can’t and you have to close your eyes.”

Dad-dito closes his eyes, just for a moment … to rest them.

Mom-ita starts to sing Moon Moon Moon.

M-ito interrupts the second verse by sitting up and saying, “Did you know Jupiter is a planet?”

Mom-ita says, “Sit down, close your eyes and go to sleep.”

M-ito pries his eyes open with his fingers, imagining they are toothpicks. He grins. He straightens his legs then bends them.

Dad-dito says (if I haven’t fallen asleep), “Close your eyes,” in a voice that is too loud.

M-ito sits up and flops down in the bed, closing his eyes very tightly.

Mom-ita continues singing, interrupting every third or fourth word with “close your eyes.” She never misses a beat of the song or a word of it.

M-ito says, “I’m hungry.”

Mom-ita and Dad-dito say together, “CLOSE YOUR EYES.”

At this point there seem to be three possible endings:
1) This is the least likely these days. M-ito closes his eyes long enough for exhaustion to ease him into sleep.

2) First, after three to five warnings, Mom-ita leaves the room, then Dad-dito leaves the room while M-ito yells, “Don’t go! Don’t go!” and cries. Both of us steel our hearts and make ourselves a dinner which we are late getting to, pretending we can’t hear him, and he falls asleep on his own a few minutes later.

3) Situation “2″ occurs only M-ito lasts another half an hour or so and we hear him yelling for us “Mom-ita! Dad-dito!” so loud that one of us stops eating and goes into the bedroom to stay with him for ten minutes or so, singing until he goes to sleep – arms interlaced in ours so we won’t leave until the sandman has come and gone.

How do you die?

Mom-ita told me of this conversation when I came home from work last week.

“Mom-ita, how do you die?” he asked her. They were lying down in bed having their morning conversation. I was long gone and off to work.

“You get really sick or you get old or something happens to you like a bad accident.”

“No, Mom-ita. I know that. What I mean is, do you lay down and just … die?”

“Well … not really. You – it could happen but it depends on how you die.”

“Well, how does it happen?”

“Well, some people are lying down.”

“Was Gran-ita lying down? Was that what happened to Gran-ita?”

“Yes, that’s what happened to her. She was lying down when she died.”

“I’m sad about that Mom-ita. You know, the way you were sad about Gran-ita.”

Gran-ita died the end of last January, a long seven months ago. M-ito knew her physically as someone who had tubes coming out of her nose and who needed a wheel chair to get around and who was always out of breath. She also was on oxygen for a good year so when we went over to Gran-ita and Pop-pop’s house M-ito had to step over lines of tubing and be careful of them as he played. It didn’t seem to bother him so much as challenge him. He asked a lot of questions then and we went over what we believe with him – we told him about his soul or spirit, that it goes up into the sky when you die, that the body goes back into the earth because it’s no longer alive, that the spirit may come back as another human or creature, that the divine spirit is in all of us and that Gran’s spirit will return in some way, shape or form. He seems to be comforted by the idea of reincarnation – or maybe that’s just me. He says he was once a velociraptor. He wants to come back next trip as an animal, perhaps a dog.

Me, I’m just glad Mom-ita gets these kinds of questions to answer and not me.

Note: The following book, Natural Family Living – by Peggy O’Mara – Peggy O’Mara has a great section on how to deal with death and the death of a family member that is very practical, concrete and helpful.

Fight Club

A child kicked my son at camp. Let’s call this child Oderoso. He has been, in the past, M-ito’s nemesis. We, his family and mine, have a history together and it is not a good one. For now I’ll concentrate on the present.

Oderoso is a child that that has driven every counselor at the camp crazy this summer, made many of them say they are turned off on children for life because of his activities. What does he do? He doesn’t listen to anyone. He takes no instruction. He is rude. He calls other kids names. And, to kick it off, he hits other children. These are daily occurrances. These activities have given him a reputation at each of the childcare sites he has been at over the few years of his short life. His parents, I think, are to blame because they neither discipline nor watch him. He is basically unsupervised. I think they refer to Oderoso as smart and very active. Perhaps these are code words. M-ito does not like Oderoso. Oderoso is smaller than M-ito and about half a year younger. Over the course of camp, though, Oderoso has not bothered M-ito, and M-ito has stayed away from him – until this week. He kicked M-ito while M-ito was sitting on the carpet and Oderoso was walking past. He kicked my son.

M-ito is basically a peaceful child and we have taught him to be so. His first line of response to a bully is to tell the bully to stop bothering hiim. Mom-ita spent a full week going over this with him when a girl was picking on him last year in Pre-K. He is to match his tone of voice (stern) with a facial expression (mean). Mom-ita had to do this because he would say, “stop it” to people who bothered him while laughing or giggling or smiling. It just didn’t work. They didn’t take him seriously. Mom-ita came up with the system of matching his tone and manner to what he was saying. She told him to pretend he was in a dramatic play center at school and act as if he was being angry or mean. They role-played this a number of times until he got it right.

His second line of response is to walk away and or ignore the perpetrator. He did this with the Pre-K girl a number of times, but then one day she hit him and he turned around and hit her back. At this point we added in the third line of response – tell the teacher so she can discipline the other child. M-ito has been good to go since.

So it’s been a while since there has been a problem like this. I can tell you, though the incident upset M-ito, it has upset me even more. It makes me want to pummel Oderoso so that he can never harm my son or any other child again. Having any child hurt my child brings out a part of me that is scary. I had to calm myself down the day after the incident when I went to pick up M-ito from camp. I was going to speak to Oderoso’s mother and I knew I had to remain calm and not yell. She had come and gone by the time I got there and Mom-ita then told me to let it go (she’d already talked to the counselors to tell them what had happened). But inside my head the issue keeps simmering and flaring up. When I hear that a child has hurt my son, I see red.

Here’s my problem. We have taught M-ito not to fight, unless absolutely necessary – though we’re not sure if he really understands what physically fighting means. M-ito has been taught not to kill insects if he can avoid it and to live peacefully with the rest of the world’s creatures. We’ve taught him the three levels of response and Mom-ita and I try to follow these guides in our lives as models for him. So I can’t just tell him to deck this other child. It won’t make sense to him. I’m also not sure it’s in his basic nature to do this (even though he did defend himself aginst the girl from his pre-k class).

So what do I do? Here’s the fantasy that fuels my walks home from the train station. I find the father and tell him that I will hit him every time his child hits my child. Then I’ll follow through and hit him as a kind of exchange program until he disciplines his child and Oderoso stops bothering M-ito. It is a violent fantasy but it gives me great satisfaction as I imagine it working immediately. As a yogi and subsequently someone who does not believe in the use of violence, it will have to remain a fantasy but still, it is attractive. Also, I wonder, would it work? I told this fantasy to Mom-ita and she’s still laughing – only I’m not sure which part she’s laughing at…

Om Namo

I get up early every morning to do my yoga practice, usually between six am and seven. I get up before M-ito and Mom-ita so I can practice in the peace and quiet of the living room without interruption. I’ve been doing this for over eight years on and off and daily for over eight months. M-ito and I have developed a routine that we go through each morning. I get up at six-thirty, say, and he gets up by seven. He comes out into the living room, half asleep, after having taken his morning pee, rubs his eyes and lays down on the couch, his head even with where my head lies on the front of my mat. If it’s cool in the living room he pulls a blanket over him (we have two on the couch for just that purpose). He draws his knees up into his chest and watches me. I smile at him and he smiles back at me. I do the second half of my practice while he daydreams.

If M-ito gets bored he’ll start to draw or he’ll take out a game and play quietly. Sometimes he’ll ask me, “Dad-dito, can you play with me when you’re done?” or “Are you up to your Om Namo’s yet?” Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya is a mantra that I complete each practice with. I rarely have to say more than, “I’m almost done,” or “I’m half way there,” or “Om Namo’s up next,” and he’s good for another ten minutes to half an hour.

Some times he’ll do some asanas or poses with me. He likes to show me the ones he’s invented, like lizard and his version of a cobra. One morning he did sun salutations, surya namaskar, with me. “Dad-dito, watch this,” comes up some times also.

My favorite mornings are when he sits down in front of me as I’m sitting in half-lotus, whispering my mantra as I count off my prayer beads, takes out his prayer beads and starts to do my mantra with me. We whisper together, “But not too loud so I can’t hear myself, Dad-dito,” he cautions me. This activity has only happened a few times, but when it has, my heart fills and my smile widens.

Yesterday morning he was anxious and he circled me while I did my pranayama (breathing practice) and mantra – abut ten minutes or so – walking around and around my half-lotus. He was waiting for me to finish. I tried to take in his energy and calm it as I exhaled. I finished my practice, said, “Om,” three times and bowed to the earth.

“Can we play a game now?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said, as I rolled up my mat.

Then he did a little dance, an M-ito dance, that spoke of monarch butterflies, lavender rebeccas, and flamenco all at once.

Heartbeat

“Dad-dito, put your hand here,” M-ito said, taking my hand in his and placing it over his heart. He’d just taken a bath and only had on his shorts. His skin is tan from camp and the mosquito bites from camping two weeks ago are almost all healed up. I could feel his heart beating through his chest. It was loud and made my son seem so vulnerable to me. He smiled as we both felt the strength of the thumping, thudding, pulsing, beating. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever felt in my life.

The Revolutionary

It’s six-thirty in the evening and M-ito has just returned home with us from a play date and dinner with his friends Noito and Celita, twins (boy and girl)eight months older than M-ito and his oldest friends – he’s known them since he was about 18 months old. Before the play date he lasted through a full day of camp. M-ito is tired and cranky, though you wouldn’t notice this if you looked at him with his smile cocky and his brown eyes sparkling. He’s still moving in the right direction though, ie: inside our apartment. But when I tell him he has to take a bath, it’s as if an invisible straw breaks.

“No!” he shouts. “I’m not taking a bath.” the smile is gone and the eyes become coals.

I go through the litany of reasons why he has to take a bath while Mom-ita checks messages. There’s the “You are stinky,” reason, the “It’s been five days and you are stinky” reason, the “because you are one stinky boy” reason, and finally the “because if you don’t you won’t be able to read any books before you go to bed,” reason. I know the last one doesn’t make any sense what-so-ever but I can’t help myself. Then I try to take M-ito’s hand and lead him into the bathroom when he runs past me into his room shoulting ,” NONONONONONONON,” and slams his door behind him. I’m tired from a full day of work and my patience is thin. I knock on the door, hard.

“Open the door,” I say in a low voice and try the door. He’s holding the doornob and pushing against the door. I try to push it open but stop not wanting to hurt him. “Open the door,” I say again, my voice threatening.

“No!” he shouts.

“M-ito. I know you and this is not you. My son has good manners and doesn’t slam the door on people.”

“You don’t know who I am,” M-ito says, “because you’re not me.”

“But I know you very well and you do not – “

“You don’t know who I am because you are not me!”

“But M-ito – “

“You are not me!” he shouts like a revolutionary.

I can picture him thrusting his fist up into the air as he says this. When did my five year old become sixteen? Mom-ita comes up behind me. “What’s going on?” she asks.

“Have you heard this one yet?” I say, exasperarted and amused now almost equally – which is good because I was about to lose it completely and the levity of the situation is a lifesaver.

“What?”

“You don’t know me because you are not me,” I repeat.

Now Mom-ita is smiling too. “I’ll get him out,” she says and I acquiesce. She opens the door. “What’s going on?” I hear her ask as the door closes behind her and I go to the computer to check the messages Mom-ita has already scrolled through.

A moment later a flash of naked boy runs past me shouting, “No, no, no, no… “

“M-ito…” Mom-ita calls from the bathroom, the sound of the water running for his bath adding texture to her call.

“You are not me!” my son shouts, but now he’s laughing.

“That’s right. I’m not,” Mom-ita says and I hear the bathroom door shut and the muffled sounds of the revolutionary fade. This is the difference between Mom-ita and me. She knows how to answer M-ito and get him to do what she wants him to do. Me, I try to make a tired, unable to hear, 5-year old understand logic. I get up from the computer and head towards the bedroom. At least I can still read him a book before he goes to bed.

M-itoisms: Toy Ray Guns

M-ito on toy ray guns – “Life is life. You gotta live with life. And these (toy ray guns) are in it.”

Nope, Too Scary

I’m trying to understand this. Why is it that M-ito is afraid to watch movies like Over the Hedge (he lasted only five minutes into the film), and Flushed Away (he lasted seven minutes thirty-two seconds), but can watch Chased by Dinosaurs and Walking with Dinosaurs? If you’ve seen any of these four movies/videos you’ll know that Hedge and Flushes are animated cartoons that are soft PG with action scenes that are scary to kids of the 6 and under set. You’ll also know that the Dinosaurs films are highly realistic CGI effects laden films about prehistoric creatures that eat each other. They eat each other. Gulp. They scare me. But M-ito is fascinated by dinosaurs so he watches these movies and, although he’s scared, he sits next to me and weathers them. He is a very determined boy.

Since he was two he said he wanted to be a paleontologist. It’s his job of choice, followed by animal rescuer and marine biologist, for four years running – and yes, he could say paleontologist at two and knew what it meant. He could also say correctly the names of over a dozen different dinosaurs – pachecephalosaurous being my favorite to hear. We keep waiting for him to get tired of dinosaurs but he doesn’t. He simply finds new interests in them. He doesn’t play with his plastic dinosaurs the way he used to – he used to line the living room floor with a giant herd of them, all kinds, all sizes, then keep them there for days as they rumbled and roared across the valley and into the bedroom. I could hear their voices echo. Now the plastics are silent but the card games and dino-opoly are ruling playtime. He also reads book after book after book about them.

Fortunately for me, I like dinosaurs too. It makes the Museum of Natural History a good place to go in the cold weather.

But I’m still jones-ing to watch Flushed Away and Over the Hedge.

“Nope, too scary,” M-ito says when I ask if he wants to watch either of them. Mom-ita rolls her eyes at me and shakes her head. What’s a Dad-dito to do?

Reincarnation

Scene One…

“Dad-dito, you know I was a velociraptor once,” M-ito says.

“You mean you were a velociraptor in another life, a long time ago?” I ask.

“Uh huh,” he says and smiles, “And I ate you.”

“You ate me? Was I a herbivore?”

He nods.

“What was I?”

“A protoceratops.”

“Lucky me.”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, I’m glad I could be of help to you.”

“Uh huh.”

Scene two…

“Dad-dito,” he asks, “can a krill come back?”

“Yup,” I say. “Even a krill. You have to start somewhere.”

“Wow.”

Dad-dito-ism: Bag of Tricks

Definition: Bag of Tricks – back-pack that parents carry containing games, crayons, pads of paper, coloring books, small plastic dinosaurs, etc… that can occupy their child and their child’s friends while eating out so that parents can attempt to communicate with each other during the meal. Use: “Did you bring your bag of tricks today?”