The Last Arrow in the Arsenal

When Oliver is angry about being buckled into his carseat, staying in his carseat, not being able to lean forward into a pike position into his carseat, or not being able to escape out of his carseat only to chuck it out the window and jump on the backseat of the moving vehicle...I can usually distract him enough to make him happy by singing a song.  "Round and Round the Mulberry Bush."  "Mary Had a Little Lamb."  "Oh The More We Get Together." "Baa Baa Black Sheep."

I kinda hate these songs. But they are inevitably the only ones that come to my tired brain at the end of the day.  I can't come up with the Les Miserables ballad of Castle On A Cloud;  Baby Mine from Dumbo, or even that cute Peanut Butter and Jelly song.  Nothing fun and creative.  Nope, just mulberries, lambs and sheep.  They make me want to bang my head on the steering wheel.  Naturally, this means that Oliver loves them.  So I wait until he's really fussing to start singing.  In the last verse of any given song, you can here an innocent little voice from the backseat: "Mmmmmmore?  Mmmmmmmore?"  And henceforth you are required to hold a continuous toddler tune until the car is parked in the garage and the engine is turned off.  My goal is to hold off on this last arrow in the arsenal until we're no more than 3 miles from home.  When he starts to fuss, we talk, I ask him what various zoo animals say, have him point to various appendages, anything to avoid the beginning of what will inevitably turn out to be the car-equivalent to Sesame Street Live.

Yesterday's drive home didn't go so well.  I needed to begin my tunes pretty much the second I pulled out of the driveway of our daycare.  Something is up with our kiddo.  Last night he cried for the better part of an hour after he was placed in his crib.  He then cried on and off from 3am to 4am.  I went in and rocked him twice, but couldn't drag myself out of bed any longer after that.  I.  Was.  Seriously tired.  It had been a long day, a long emotional day, and I was in a near-coma when my head hit the pillow, only to be wakened occasionally with toddler cries. 

My exhausted self had the not-so-bright idea of texting Michael (he had snored me out and I was in the back room next to the nursery).  In my half-coma, I thought, "I can text Michael and have him come rock Oliver for a while."  How I thought a short blip signaling a text message would awaken my sleeping bear of a husband was beyond me, but it sure made sense at the time during my intermittent REM.

I got a text back.  Around 11 am, when we were both at work.  Michael said, "huh?????????"

I read what I had sent.  It read, and I quote (pointing out that Buddy Bear is really something that we call our son):

"You can try rocking Buddy bear, beer crying for a while bit everything seems ok when I go..."

Crying beer; now that's an image.

I think I was trying to say that Michael could come rock Ollie, aka Buddy Bear, for a while, although when I'd go into the nursery he seemed to be okay even though he had been crying.  Michael asked me today why I texted.  "I wouldn't hear a text come through," he had said.  Well, duh.  That makes sense to me now.  I was under the influence of sleep deprivation.  Sleep-texting.  Sleeping behind the cell phone. 

It's 10:30pm, and it seems to be a better night.  Oliver is sleeping well, and I have gotten through the day without needing to sing about any farm animals.  The only texts I have sent out were ones that made sense.  And nobody here is crying beer.