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Saturday, February 10, 2007

Bedtime, Hiding, and the Cat's Meow

Bedtime rituals are done for the night. My older son (OS) is done "reading" to his dolls and arguing with his hairbrush and my younger son (YS) is no longer fussing with his pacifier. All that can be heard over the baby monitor is deep, peaceful, sleepy breathing. Finally, my husband and I have the house to ourselves. Then the silence is shattered by a banging sound and angry meows, as one of our cats leaves her newest hiding place in our room and, realizing that she is trapped upstairs, starts hitting the door with her paws and demanding "release." By the time my husband or I get the door so that she can prance down the stairs, both boys are typically wide awake again and lacking any interest in going back to sleep.

In many cases, OS finds the cat before she gets to the door, and I am alerted to her presence by the sound of thump, thump, thump combined with anxious meows as my older son gets out of bed and chases her around his bedroom. When that happens, I don't see any dainty prancing when I open the upstairs door; instead I see a flying furball flash past at an alarming speed in a desperate effort to get away from her pursuer.

Either way, the quiet evening is shot, and there are usually two tired and grouchy boys (and at least one very smug cat) the next morning. In order to avoid this scenario, my husband or I typically perform a "cat scan" before going downstairs, in which we check out all known hiding places to try to "remove" her before she can make trouble. Unfortunately, the cats are pretty good at constantly coming up with new and tricky hiding places, so we sometimes hear the cat's meow even after a "cat scan" has been attempted.

A couple of weeks ago, I heard meowing after a successful "cat scan" and extraction had alredy been performed. It was actually OS "meowing" underneath the bedroom door. I think he thought I would open the door so that he could scurry downstairs, just the like cats do. Needless to say, his imitation wasn't persuasive. I held strong!

A few days later OS was in his room having quiet time. Although he probably assumed that I was downstairs, I was actually in my room with YS. When he started meowing under the door, he ended up really surprised to have me appear behind him. He slunk back to his bed. I have to say, I was very impressed with his creativity. Impressed but not conned into letting him get out of quiet time.

A. Elliot's Lesson Learned: Just because you think your son is the cat's meow, doesn't mean you think he is a cat.

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Name:Alex Elliot
Home:MA, United States
About Me:Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 6 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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For those of us who didn't get an instruction manual with our babies and for whom parenting hasn't always gone as planned. On a more serious note this blog is about supporting a woman's ability to make her own choices about parenting including the choice, for whatever reason, to bottle feed her babies formula.

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