It Happened One Night

We had a broken night here on Friday. Giulio had been trying for two days with lots of tears and little success to move his bowels and by Friday night I knew it wasn't going to be good. He passed out on our friend's couch around 11 o'clock, after an evening of false alarms, running to the bathroom and the changing his mind once he got there saying, "I just fine!" My friend Theresa offered me a suppository, or what we call around my house Up the Butt, and it was very tempting to go ahead and use it. However, when we use the UTB it results in tears and screaming from Giulio before there is any action. I didn't think Theresa really wanted a 3 year old hopping and crying around her dining room in pain while the rest of us ate dessert so I decided to hold off until we got home. Once at home though Giulio was sleeping so well that I didn't feel like waking home, decided he could try again tomorrow to go, and so, exhausted we all went to sleep around 12:30.
At 2:30 I am woken by the sounds of crying. I lie there for a second deciphering which child it is. It takes a moment to realize that it is Giulio, and no sooner have I thrown back the covers and my feet have touched the floor that I hear Livia joining in. This isn't that confused-where-am-I-bad-dream crying. This is open mouthed-full throat yelling from both of them. Did I mention that it is 2:30, oh, and did I mention that we are sleeping with the windows open? Fair enough you say, but I really don't want to wake the neighbors, who are undoubtably sleeping with their windows open too. Not my neighbors below me, we're cool, I mean the neighbors in the building next to ours. Once, about a nine months after we had lived here, towards the end of August a tenant in the building next door asked me if Giulio suffered from stomach problems, as they had often heard him crying during the night. What they were hearing were not stomach problems but a jet lagged toddler still on American time, outraged that his mother had left him in his crib to cry it out, rather than letting him get up at 3 am. While I smiled and assured the neighbor that no, Giulio had no stomach problems, I got the hint. From then on, all crying jags that occur late at night in the summer months involve immediate damage control i.e. shut bedroom windows so the neighbors won't hear. Last summer I got off easy, Giulio when he would wake up would simply go and get into bed with my parents who were here last summer for four months to give me a hand before the second baby showed up. Now it's back to all hands on deck i.e. my hands on deck. My husband, Sleeping Beauty's younger brother, rarely wakes for these late night damage control sessions.
He did wake for this one, with both kids screaming to wake the dead. I went into immediate action, shutting the bedroom windows, giving Livia some water to drink and then leaving her to cry while I carried a wailing Giulio into the bathroom, closing the bedroom door behind me. She would have to wait. Giulio tried for the upteenth time to go, screaming and hopping up and down in pain, tears running down his face. "Sshhhh Giulio!" I said, closing the bathroom window. Lorenzo and I held a quick conference to Up the Butt or not Up the Butt. Lorenzo was all for waiting. I, who had no interest in passing the rest of the night getting out of bed every hour or so while Giulio tried in vain to go, quickly dismissed that suggestion. We needed to do it, and we needed to do it now. We carried a still crying Giulio to the living room, while in the bedroom Livia was still wailing away. Lorenzo got the UTB, a plastic collapsible vial with a narrow straw at one end, while I got Giulio on the couch. Upon seeing the vial Giulio started yelling even louder, "nononononono!" Like two coyboys wrestling a wild calf to the ground so they can brand it with the hot iron, Lorenzo and I pinned Giulio down to the couch, me holding his flailing body into place, while Lorenzo inserted the UTB. Giulio's yells turn to screams. Shit, we are sitting under an open window, who knows what the neighbors are thinking now? It sounds like we are either a) branding Giulio with a hot iron or b) trying to kill him. I put my hand over his mouth to muffle him, and in a moment it's over. Screams return to regular crying, and once I get his diaper back on him, Giulio ceases to cry, other than the occasional shuttering hick-up. In the kid's room there is silence; Livia has fallen back asleep. I carry Giulio back to his room and get him settled back into bed, and then I join an already sleeping Lorenzo. I am asleep before my head hits the pillow.
3:30 Crying sounds coming from the kids room again but before I can open my eyes I hear the patter of little feet running down the hallway to the bathroom and the sounds of a diaper being ripped off and then discarded. I join Giulio where he is sitting on the potty, crying. "Oh sweetie, it hurts, doesn't it?" He nods, I sit down opposite him on the rim of the tub, and he leans over and puts his head in my lap. I make some soothing noises and rub his head, he sighs and relaxes a bit. And then lo and behold! He goes! I get him cleaned up, new diaper, and then back to bed. I re-open the kid's bedroom windows, as well as the one in the bathroom, damage control no longer an issue. Both kids are now asleep, Lorenzo (who couldn't be woken for this round) is asleep too. I am sure that now Giulio will sleep late this morning...............
7:30. A small voice in my ear whispers: "Mommy, I hungry." And he was, of course, in the worst mood all day Saturday!
Today is Mother's Day, my present: Lunch out with the family somewhere in the mountains. Except that any day trip of ours is kind of like preparing for a mini trip to Rome. We have to dress the kids, pack backpacks with jackets, sweatshirts, change of clothing, diapers, and sunscreen. Lorenzo insists on making sandwiches, and I have to organize Livia's food, all while watching the clock and yelling at each other repeatedly, "We need to go! Do you know what time it will be by the time we get there....!" And then there is of course the journey; me trying to read a map and give Lorenzo directions, while Giulio demands water and breadsticks from the backseat. And once I have dug out the water bottle and filled up the cup (yes, I know a Good Mother would have a spill-proof bottle all ready for him to drink from especially for the journey) and handed it back to him, he then takes one small sip and tries to give it back to me, announcing "I fine!"
I ran into a friend of my on Friday afternoon and wished her a Happy Mother's Day, she is the mother of three boys. She grabbed my arm and looked me in the eye."Do you know what I would like to do for Mother's Day? I want to be on the top of a mountain. All by myself. Alone. I know you know what I am talking about." I did. I do. Sitting in the front seat trying not to be carsick as I look for some town on the map while Lorenzo swings the car around a hairpin turn while Giulio demands water from the backseat, I can't help but think how nice it would be to be alone today. As long of course that I knew that the kids would be home that evening. We end the day by going to a church with Romanesque frescos. It's down a lane, with high stone walls on each side and a cherry tree bearing fruit out front. Next to the church is a small cemetary which is obviously full, no one has been buried there since the 1970s, other than the row of nuns down at one end. A large number of the tombs are of the wordy, Victorian variety, something I have never seen with Italian tombs. "Most loving mother and devoted wife, goodness personified" and "Devoted to his widowed mother he was taken too soon from this life at 16 years of age." And of course, many old people. I am walking hand and hand with Giulio reading some of the gravestones when a woman comes in. She looks at me a minute with Giulio and then comes over. "These women were mothers too," she says. "Life is like a wheel, it just keeps turning." Then she smiles and wishes me a good day before going over to visit a particular grave. I smile too and squeeze Giulio's hand, happy to be a mother, with my young child together on Mother's Day.