When Mr. Burt and my parents asked me what I want for Christmas this year, I had a hard time coming up with anything. (This is saying a lot, considering my Christmas lists used to bear an alarming resemblance to Sally Brown’s.) It was much easier for me to come up with what I don’t want (heavy sweaters, sweatshirts, button-down shirts that have to be ironed…to which Mr. Burt replied in bemusement, “Does that leave anything at all for me to give you?” and which may not be so far removed from old Sally after all); I’m content with the things I have, and there’s very little else that I need.

Except for sleep. But last I checked, sleep doesn’t come gift-wrapped.

It’s been two weeks since Mr. Burt and I had a good, solid night of sleep, thanks to the Burt Squirt going through one of those physical development stages (learning how to pull himself up on the crib rail and beginning to walk) notorious for throwing off sleep schedules. (Also, gas.) Mr. Burt, I think, is actually getting less sleep than I am most nights–though apparently he’s not keeping count.

I, however, am.

Now, I learned rather early on in this parenthood venture that score-keeping is the quickest way to lose the marriage game, so it’s not that I’m sitting up in the middle of the night doing fuzzy math as the Burt Squirt nurses and resenting Mr. Burt for being snuggled up in bed. No, I’ve developed a more noble kind of arithmetic that revolves around me obsessing over Mr. Burt getting as much sleep as I do. Or me losing as much as he does. And me feeling guilty if I get more. Because that just wouldn’t be fair, would it?

A word problem:

If LR goes to sleep at 11ish at night and Mr. Burt at 11:30ish and the Burt Squirt wakes up at 1:30ish in the morning and Mr. Burt gets up with him, not coming back to bed until 3:00ish, how many hours of sleep did LR and Mr. Burt get if LR only slept intermittently during the hour and a half Mr. Burt was trying to soothe the Burt Squirt back to sleep and then got up to feed the Burt Squirt from 3:00ish until 3:30ish but was too wired to fall asleep until after 4ish and then was up at 7ish and Mr. Burt got up at 8ish?

I never was able to come up with an exact answer to my muddled math problem, but I got the gist of it across to Mr. Burt in conversation as we showered and dressed this morning:

LR: “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t sleep very much while you were up with the Burt Squirt.”

Mr. Burt: “Why would that make me feel better?”

LR: “Because we got the same amount of sleep. Misery loves company.”

Mr. Burt: “Oh. I’d rather you actually get sleep.”

For the first time in nine months of being a mom (and in six and a half years of being a wife, really, because I’ve always struggled with (unfounded) feelings of guilt and fear that Mr. Burt might resent me for not being a monetary contributor in our relationship), it hit me:

I don’t have to feel guilty about getting more sleep than my husband does.

Because he loves me.

And fairness and equality, while both very essential ingredients for a successful marriage, don’t have all that much to do with love.

Misery may love company, but love hates misery. After all, love is why we get up when the Burt Squirt cries in the middle of the night and lose all this sleep in the first place.

It brings to mind the words of one of my favorite Christmas carols: What I can I give Him / Give my heart.

Mr. Burt may not be able to give me exactly what I want for Christmas, but he gives me the one thing I really need.

As for sleep…maybe that’s what the Burt Squirt will give to me.

It’s amazing to me how many characteristics you’d think would be learned behaviors actually turn out to be hardwired into our genetic code.

Talkativeness, for example.

When I wasn’t quite three, my parents took me on a road trip up the Pacific Coastal Highway. They figured I’d sleep the whole way. It seemed a safe assumption to make, as most kids sleep in cars.

I, however, was not most kids.

Not only did I stay awake the entire drive through California, I talked the whole time, too, earning myself the nickname Chatty Cathy.

My mother also wished I would have a chatterbox child when I grew up. She has amazing power. (I’m terrified about the karmic retribution I’m in for after The Playground Incident.)

Though the Burt Squirt, of course, has never been called Chatty Cathy, he has been dubbed Jabberwocky. He’s nowhere near three, but any time he’s in the car, he’s awake and talking.

For that matter, any time he’s awake, he’s talking.

And as of 4:30 this morning, he doesn’t even have to be awake to be talking.

That would be the Bond coming out in him.

You see, the Burt Squirt comes from a long line of sleep-talkers. My shining moment occurred on a family vacation, when my father, up late reading, heard me say to my brother in the other bed, “Don’t tell Dad!” Dad once freaked my mom out by suddenly sitting up in bed one night and whacking the foot of the bed, saying, “It’s in the sheets!” Mom never was sure of what it was; maybe the same it my brother was talking about when Dad caught him sleep-walking one night and Greg mumbled something unintelligible before slugging Dad on the shoulder and saying, “Psst! Dad, pass it on.”

But it’s Mom who has, fittingly, the mother of all sleep-talking stories. It was Dad’s turn to get a little surprise the night Mom sat up in bed, grabbed his hand, brought it up to her lips, and planted a smacking kiss on it. When he asked her, bemused, what she was doing, Mom replied, “It’s a handshake–a friendly gesture!” and promptly lay back down.

I’d be more surprised if the Burt Squirt didn’t talk in his sleep. Though I thought we’d at least get through the baby monitor years before he followed in the family footsteps. Which was how I witnessed this milestone: Mr. Burt was putting the Burt Squirt back to bed after I nursed him at 4 AM, while I tried, unsuccessfully, to fall back asleep due to the stream of baby babble emitting from the monitor on my bedside table. I was feeling rather sorry for Mr. Burt, thinking he’d be in there a while if the Burt Squirt was that wide awake, when suddenly he was crawling back into bed with me, laughing.

“He was talking in his sleep!” he said, and I realized the baby monitor was silent.

“Aw, he said dada in his sleep while you were patting him,” I said, thinking of how my brother and I always had that uncanny ability to sleep-talk about or to my dad when he was awake to hear it.

The Burt Squirt’s sentience would have been more impressive had I not earlier that day witnessed him look directly at the cat and shriek, “Dada!”

In fact, dada seems to be the Burt Squirt’s word of choice for describing anything that makes him happy, as you can see in this video in which he is clearly not asleep.

…or is he?

The Burt Squirt on the Diaper Deck, which, incidentally, was invented by his grandfather. Because the Squirt's daddy inevitably had a blowout whenever they were out, and in those days there were no such things as infant changing tables. A true family legacy.

I’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating that for my first Mother’s Day, the Burt Squirt gave me eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.  Mr. Burt gave me the day off from diaper duty.  And a new coffeemaker.  All such thoughtful mommy gifts that it’s impossible to say which is the best.

Yesterday was Mr. Burt’s first Father’s Day.

He got a shirt that didn’t fit.

He volunteered to change two diapers.  Both turned out to be horrendously poopy.

Three times he picked up the Burt Squirt and became the target of projectile spit-ups of atomic proportions.

Apart from sounding like the “The Twelve Days of Father’s Day,” this must be proof of something.

Is it that I’m the Burt Squirt’s favorite?  Or does he realize, even at this tender age, the wisdom in not biting the breast that feeds him? Maybe it’s just one more example of the gender disparity inherent in Hallmark holidays.

One thing I’m sure of:  I wouldn’t have had as good an attitude as Mr. Burt if any of these misfortunes had befallen me on Mother’s Day.  He takes the bad parts of parenting in stride, without losing his smile or getting annoyed at the Burt Squirt.  Because he knows that in life, crap happens.  Literally.  And you’ve just got to clean it up and move on without letting yourself get mired in it.

This from the man who swore, before the Squirt was born, that he’d never be able to change a poopy diaper without throwing up.

So Happy Father’s Day to my better half.  I learn more from you about how to be a great parent than I could get any parenting book.  Especially since I don’t have time to read parenting books.

And Liam may only be three months old, but with you for his example, he’s well on his way to being a great dad someday, too.

And, as the poops of the fathers are visited upon the sons, you’ll be vindicated on a future Father’s Day.  What better present is there than that?

The Burt Squirt isn’t great at naps.

That’s not a complaint!  He’s great at sleeping.  At night.  Typically from around 10:30 till 8ish the next morning.  Without waking up for a feeding.

(He first did this on Mother’s Day — best present ever! — when he was just a little over two months old, and has kept it up ever since.  But I really shouldn’t brag, lest A) I incur hatred from other parents and B) jinx myself.)

So, to reiterate:  the Burt Squirt isn’t great at naps, but I’m not complaining because I get a lot more sleep every night than a lot of people who don’t have kids.

It’s not that he doesn’t nap at all; it’s just that he doesn’t nap for several long stretches a day, like all the baby books say babies his age should do.

(Though how is he supposed to do what baby books say?  He can’t read.  He can only learn by example.

His example, apparently, is our cat.)

Again, I’m not complaining!

Much.

Okay…I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think life would be perfect if I had a little more time for housekeeping.  On the plus side, I’m learning the art of efficiency.

However, as good as I’m getting at cramming a lot into a very little span of time, I find myself doing anything possible to make those naptimes, when they do happen, last as long as possible.

Today, that meant using my food processor in the upstairs guest bathroom.

(Next naptime will see me cleaning said bathroom so my in-laws won’t have to perform their daily ablutions amidst the remnants of minced garlic and onion.)

Such great lengths to maintain a quiet napping environment, and the Burt Squirt still woke up before I could finish slicing and dicing.

Thank goodness for friends who come over to entertain wide-awake babies so Mommies can put together from-scratch lasagnas.

You wouldn’t think it would take me a month to post about the most important event of my life to date.  Then again, the sort of event that qualifies as the most important one of my life to date isn’t exactly conducive to having the time to write the sort of blog post that does it justice, so maybe you would think it would take me a month.  Of course, it only took me a few days to post pics to Facebook, so maybe this is just yet another of those cases where Facebook has ruined my ability to blog.  Seeing as there are all of ten of you who actually follow my blog and you’re all on Facebook, there’s probably very little point to posting now.  But A) it seems wrong not to mention the birth of my first baby on my blog and B) even though there are captions on my Facebook pics, they don’t convey my point of view.  Not that I’m likely conveying much through these sleep-deprived words.   But anyway, here goes…

All through my pregnancy, I watched TLC’s A Baby Story religiously. All five times a day it airs. Then I called it preparation for childbirth. Now, twenty-nine days after giving birth, I’m still watching it, only I call it all I do is nurse my baby every 2-3 hours, what else am I supposed to do? comparing notes.  Herein follows my baby story:  Read the rest of this entry »