Emily Cavanagh
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Notes From an Island


​Thoughts on writing, reading, teaching and parenting-and everything in between

​Nighttime Visitor

10/6/2016

5 Comments

 
Picture

My three year old is slowly killing me. It’s an incremental effort, day by day, with her pulling back just enough when she knows she’s really close to getting the job done.

It started sometime over the summer. In the midst of family travel and transitioning from her crib to a bed, she began to wake earlier and earlier. As of now, I believe the record is 3:45 AM. These days, it’s usually sometime between four and five, though she’s also taken to appearing in our bedroom in the middle of the night, unbidden, a chubby apparition waiting to be tucked back in.

Have you been up before five AM recently? If yes, then I’m sorry. If no, let me tell you what it’s like. It’s dark. Middle-of-the-night dark. The lights are off in all the other houses, and the world is quiet and peaceful. Even the dog is out cold. Apparently my daughter has no such internal clock. 

Nearly eight years into this parenting game, I’m a seasoned early riser and used to the middle of the night wake-up call. It just seems that recently my three year-old has taken it to the next level with renewed vigor. It also happens to have come around the same time as she’s learned all the ways to unleash mayhem in our household. Whoever coined the term the “terrible twos” had obviously never met a three year-old. 

This age does not bring out my best parenting skills. Too often I’m cranky, short-tempered, and quick to yell. I’ve never been a morning person, and as far as I’m concerned, four-thirty isn’t morning. These aren’t my daughter’s finest moments either.

And yet I know this is a stage. Within a few months or a year (God help us all), this too will fade into the blurry repository of memory. I will vaguely remember that she used to get up early or visit me in the middle of the night and that she left a wake of chaos behind her during the daytime hours. Soon enough (too soon), she won’t want me to tuck her in at all. Before long I’ll be yelling at her to get out of bed so she’s not late to school. And it’s only a matter of time before everything I do annoys her.

All parents have heard it: The days are long, but the years are short. I try to remind myself of this when I hear her toddling footsteps on the stairs at three, when I know I’ll be unable to fall back to sleep, and I’ll be dragging all day. I try to summon my patience and my own mother, who rarely yelled (at least in my memory—isn’t memory a tricky beast?). I take her sticky hand in my mine, or pick her up in the black night.  Her head rests on my shoulder, her soft hair draped along my neck. I carry her in the darkness back to bed where I tuck her in with her baby doll and favorite purple bear. The truth is, she just wants me, no matter the hour or inconvenience.
​
And the years are short.


5 Comments
Heather Krill
10/6/2016 06:08:46 pm

Oh, Emily, how I know this to be true-- and I love that I could count on seeing out by 6 am walking with a girl or 2 when I would stay with Greg and Holly and theirs have always slept to completely reasonable hours. I now try to just remind myself that it would be worse if I had to wake them up for school in the morning. It's my mantra. I keep repeating to myself several times a day. :) Thank you for your writing-- a gift in a stormy day

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Emily
10/11/2016 04:50:09 am

Thanks for reading, Heather. Some day soon these days will all be a blur. Looking forward to your reading this weekend!

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assignment writers link
3/9/2020 05:54:24 am

It is nice that you had a night time visitor. I think that people need to go and think about this in a better light, though. It is nice that you have a friend that can do it, and it is fine. I want to have a friend that this is the same, this is just what I want to do my man. I will become a person who can be like that to my friends, or I will at least try.

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Marie
10/7/2016 04:29:28 am

Emily, that is beautifully written. You are right, it will be over before you know it. Soon you'll be staying up late, anxiously looking through the curtains as headlights come down the street, waiting for the girls to make curfew and you may remember this time fondly.

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Emily
10/11/2016 04:48:55 am

Thanks, Marie. I'm definitely not ready for those days, though I can already see them coming. Little kids, little problems...

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