Or maybe they're lulling us while hatching big schemes for later

I am both pleased and relieved to report that the outlook on the child-rearing front is generally improving. The little girl remains an unimpeachable peach. There was some worry that as she passed her thirteenth week out of the womb (marking the end of the legendary fourth trimester which some evolutionary biologists (not to mention amateur evolution enthusiasts such as myself) believe would be better spent gestating if our heads didn’t get so dang big that childbirth at 53 weeks would be physically impossible) she would mysteriously transform into an altogether different creature in terms of temperament, biorhythmic schedule, and so forth. But thankfully no. She is still mellow and accepting of pretty much whatever the current circumstances dictate. Time for school? Fine by her. Time to sleep not eat, or eat not play, etc? Copacetic. Recently there have been a few more 3 am awakenings than had happened in a while, but nothing so major as to ruin an entire night’s sleep. (Or sometimes nothing so major as to even wake me up, for which I give abundant credit and gratitude to the mother of my children whom I by no means take for granted.) So the little girl is still good as gold.


And the little guy has been much less monstrous as well. It took some more thinly-veiled bribery, as well as a fair amount of patience in reacquainting him with exactly how that works, but he is now back in the groove of collecting stickers at bedtime for good behavior and cashing in set numbers of stickers for small rewards. He hasn’t attempted a running breakout from his bedroom at naptime or bedtime in several days, and yesterday he was rewarded with a diecast Chick Hicks (do I even need to elucidate that Chick is a character from the movie Cars, at this point? I think it’s more than fair for you, the reader, to assume any fictional character in my son’s orbit is from Cars unless I specifically annotate otherwise.) I don’t know if there’s a connection with his joy at receiving this latest sought-after prize, but yesterday at school he took a 2 hour nap. I can’t remember how long it’s been since that happened, but I know it’s been quite a stretch because the daycare provider marking the nap’s duration on the little guy’s daily report festooned the number 2 with all manner of exclamation points and smiley faces. So really, when the little guy’s happy, everybody’s happy.

Bottom line, it feels like the inmates of the asylum are reasonably under control. And of course by simply saying that I’ve all but guaranteed that something or other will gang agley, but so it goes.