Gemini vs Gemini

Essay A

According to the glossy pages of “The Gentle Parent” and various $15-per-month sleep apps, the “Five B’s” (Baby Food, Bath, Breast/Bottle, Book, Bed) are the sacred pillars of a peaceful evening. The experts promise that a lukewarm soak with lavender oil will “signal to the nervous system that the day is done,” leading to a serene transition into slumber. It’s a lovely, soft-focus lie. In my house, the “Five B’s” are less of a ritual and more of a tactical retreat through a sensory minefield.

Field Report: The 7:00 PM Scramble

7:02 PM: I initiate the “relaxing” bath. My toddler decides he is a hydrothermal vent. He sits on the faucet. I attempt to add the lavender oil, but the cap falls in. The bathroom now smells like a high-end spa in the middle of a flood.

7:14 PM: Water check: 40% in the tub, 60% on my jeans. I try to wash his hair. Toddler reacts as if I am performing an exorcism with a lukewarm washcloth.

7:28 PM: The “Dry-Off.” This is like trying to gift-wrap a live salmon. He executes a perfect floor-roll, coating his damp body in a fine layer of dust and a single stray Cheerio from earlier this morning.

7:45 PM: Pajama Wrestling. I have the zip-up onesie. He has the agility of a greased lightning bolt. I accidentally put both his legs into one pant hole. He finds this hilarious; I am sweating through my shirt.

8:02 PM: Storytime. The “calm” book is Goodnight Moon. We are on page three when he decides the “mush” looks like a planet and tries to eat the page.

8:12 PM: I am horizontal on the floor next to the crib, pretending to be a rug so he doesn’t notice I’m still in the room. My back is spasming, and I can smell the sour milk on my shoulder.

By 8:45 PM, the house is finally, eerily quiet. I retreat to the kitchen, which looks like a crime scene involving mashed peas and soggy towels. My spouse joins me, and we stand over the sink, eating cold leftovers straight from the Tupperware.

“He was actually kind of cute when he tried to wear his diaper as a hat,” I whisper, the adrenaline finally fading into a dull ache.

“The cutest,” they agree. We laugh about the “salmon-wrap” incident, the frustration of twenty minutes ago evaporating into the kind of hazy affection that only parents and people with short-term memory loss can manage. The “ideal” routine failed, but the boy is clean(ish) and loved.

We obsess over these routines because we want control, but the magic isn’t in the successful execution of a blog-post schedule. It’s in the mess. One day, I won’t have a damp toddler screaming because I dried his left pinky toe wrong. I’ll just have a quiet bathroom.

My advice? Write down the chaos. Don’t just save the photos where they are smiling in a clean sweater; save the “log” of the night the lavender oil spilled and everyone ended up crying over a book about a cow jumping over a moon. These are the details that fade first, and they are the ones that actually make up a life.

Essay B

Every parenting blog you will ever read will tell you that the key to good sleep for your kid is a bedtime routine – the catchy alliterative “Five Bs”: baby food/bottle, bath, brush, book, and bed. Like every plan that fell apart in the field, our actual bedtime routine never quite followed this cozy-sounding schedule. Below is an excerpt I documented after yet another “normal” night with my 10-month-old son:

7:21 pm: Realize that the baby’s feed time starts in 9 minutes, and I still haven’t cooked the tofu or steamed the broccoli. Panic, try to cook both while he hangs on to my calves.

7:43 pm: Finally have the gourmet meal on a plate and baby strapped in, but he shows no interest in soy or cruciferous vegetables today. Much of the food falls to the floor. In desperation, we stuff some puree down his gullet to the maniacal repeat singing of “A-B-C-D, E-F-G!”

8:10 pm: Done with the meal, quick wash in the kitchen sink where he manages to catch a hold of the tap and spray water everywhere. After extracting him from his water park, manage to give him an oil massage to the tune of “Shape Of You” – this happens to be the only part of the bedtime routine both of us enjoy.

8:13 pm: In he goes into the shower, where he sits with a white-knuckled hold – one on the edge of the bathtub, the other on his bath giraffe – bearing with the scrubbing we give him. However, he is pretty intent on turning an already slippery ordeal into nightmare-inducing trauma when he attempts to stand up on the side of the tub himself. Wish he’d keep his standing practice to safer realms of carpeted living rooms.

8:19 pm: Now the harrowing part where I brave my silicone brush covered index finger into the jaws of this tiny human with his tiny razor-sharp teeth. A quick escape has become impossible ever since he has taken a liking to the adult mint toothpaste in all its spiciness, even though a fleck of pepper on his tofu 15 minutes ago resulted in bouts of panting and wailing. The docile strawberry-flavored kids toothpaste lies forgotten in the top drawer.

8:25 pm: Back on his bed for a spot of naked shenanigans, where he tries to escape before anyone can wrangle him into diapers or clothes. Sometimes fun, but mostly like trying to put buttons on an eel.

8:31 pm: Racing against the clock to read him his book (where is the green sheep?!) but need to still give him room to close the book and reopen it to the same page 20 times.

8:35 pm: Finally in bed, patting myself on the back for managing to do it all by 8:30 pm.

9:07 pm: He’s still not asleep, husband walks in and wonders if he’s had his milk. Of course he hasn’t, I set it to warm but never picked up the bottle.

9:10 pm: After chugging the milk down faster than an athlete on a water break, he’s out cold.

9:11 pm: Now time to pick up after him – the messy bib full of puree, plate full of leftover tasteless tofu and broccoli, the bathtub full of dirty lukewarm water, the water around the kitchen sink, the bottle of oil precariously open, the empty milk bottle that needs to be rinsed so it doesn’t curdle.

9:37 pm: Sit down to eat our own dinner, going over little snippets of the day (“He really loves the see-saw at the playground now. It was so cute!”, “He’s figured out how to take a U-turn with the walker now!”)

No parenting blog ever tells you that you will do so many little things for your children every day that your memory cannot possibly retain all of it, especially a sleep-deprived one. So all the little details start to slowly fade away. Each time I re-read my own words here I’m struck by yet another little detail that I had completely forgotten. So to all the new parents out there – take some time to occasionally document the little things!