Most of the time when you have a new baby, you figure that you aren't going to get a lot of sleep at night. But you don't think that it will be your house guests (aka your parents) that will be keeping you up. When my parents were visiting last month, we had one of those nights of complete chaos at the Gudino household. With a new baby, we get up every 3-4 hours to feed the little guy and our daughter Meyer's new habit of jumping out of her bed and crawling into ours seems to be a nightly occurrence, so we are no strangers to the wee hours of dawn. But we never expected a constipated dog to take over the night and turn our house into a serious case of the midnight crazies. My parents are from Maine, so they don't lock their doors or set any sort of alarms and when they come to our house they have to adjust to the chimes, the apps and the alarms that we use to run our household. So on this particular chaotic night, I wasn't really shocked to wake up to the alarm going off only to see my dad on the camera walking outside with Nelly, their dog. The best part though was that he didn't even notice that the alarm was blaring throughout the house at 1:00 am. Oye! When he came back several minutes later, I didn't even bother to set the alarm again because I figured he may do it again. And was I right. But this time it was almost 3:00 am and it was only him walking out the front door, without the dog and without his shirt. What the hell? At the same time,
the baby woke up hungry so I was busy feeding him while Meyer waltzed on into our bedroom like she owned the place, carrying her Boppy, blankie and Belle doll. I woke up Anthony and asked him to go see what was happening downstairs. When he came back up, he said that my dad was wandering around the neighborhood (shirtless) looking for my mom who was walking Nelly, trying to get her to poop. Apparently she was constipated and wouldn't lay down. She kept whimpering and pacing back and forth in the bedroom. And when the dog can't sleep, neither can the parents, or the whole household in this case. What the heck was happening? I decided to go check on the situation myself. So there I was at 3:30 am, walking around my neighborhood, without a bra or shoes, calling for my parents and the dog. This was definitely going to appear on my Nextdoor neighborhood app the next morning. 'Shirtless man and braless girl walking around neighborhood at 3:00 am shouting 'Nelly! Rhoda!' Anyone know what was going on?' When I couldn't find anyone (seriously where did they go? Did they get abducted by aliens?), I figured I would go back inside and get some sleep. But while I was headed up the stairs, I heard a dog whimpering inside the house. Okay, what was going on? I went into the spare bedroom to find it empty. I then opened up the bathroom door to find my mom standing in her robe holding onto Nelly, who was on her leash. "Mom, what are you doing? Pop is canvasing the neighborhood looking for you guys!" I said. She looked puzzled. "He is? I thought I would come in here with Nelly to calm her down and keep her quiet." Well, that plan backfired. So now my mom and the dog headed out into the night looking for my wandering father. My head was spinning and I needed my bed. I woke up about a half an hour later to the front door chime and saw on the camera that my dad came back inside, alone. Then, I saw my mom and the dog sitting out on the front porch...at 4:00 am. I went out to see what they were doing and woke my mom up in the process. Immediately, when I said "Mom!" she snapped her head up like she was awake the whole time. Just like she does on the couch almost every night after 8:00 pm and like that one time we went to see
Sherlock Holmes (she was asleep the whole time but tried to convince my sister and I that she saw the whole movie). Don't believe it! I asked her what she was doing outside and she said she was going to hang out with Nelly until she poops. What!?! So now I had two guards at my door instead of the alarm?? This was also going to end up on the Nextdoor neighborhood app, for sure! I shrugged and went back to bed. I was exhausted and needed at least 8 more hours after all that chaos!
