On the Fifth Day There Was Silence

We girls had a good weekend without Aaron home; it went fast. I took Anna to the high school football game Friday night. We left in the third quarter when we were losing 40-0. Sadly, this was not the worst football we saw this weekend. Why do we torture ourselves with the Lions again? FIRE MILLEN. Twice on Sundays.

The biggest parenting development around here is that we seem to have found a nap time routine that is annoying but works. Eventually. And that's good enough for me.

Anna has always needed to be held to fall asleep for naps, although for quite some time she has put herself to sleep at night just fine. When she went down to one nap in the afternoon, usually by the time she got her milk snack, she'd fall asleep drinking it. But when she didn't, she'd need to be held/rocked until really asleep or she'd make sure she stayed awake all afternoon by standing up in her crib screaming.

Needless to say, this sound was not conducive to reading for comprehension. So because my work time is precious, I would always make sure she was asleep before putting her down. Sometimes Aaron wouldn't, and she'd scream bloody murder, and I'd want to drive my red pencil into my eardrums.

Lately she has not been falling asleep as easily, and I need her to learn to sleep on her own in the daytime too. She is just way too big and heavy for the holding and bouncing her while I'm standing up thing, plus we should get her off bottles of milk (she will tolerate a Nuby cup instead of bottle, but prefers this babyish routine with the bottle, and that's supposed to be gone by age 2). So I was looking for a time when I could afford to be thoroughly annoyed by prolonged crying sounds rather than needing every minute possible to work.

Thankfully, my husband is more stubborn than me—he let her cry a few times and it has started working. Sure, it takes 45 minutes to an hour of alternating between babbling and screeching . . . but eventually she falls asleep! In fact, here's a little live-blogging of today's nap timeline:

2:05 Left her in her room, sleepy. No noise on my way out.
2:11 Sounds of clunking against crib. "Mama!"
2:14 "Maaaaaamaaaaaa! Waaaaaaaa! Maaaamaaaaaa. Aaaaaaaaaaagh!"
2:23 Silence. Victory in record time?
2:24 Nope. "Waaaaaaaaaaa!" She realized she was almost asleep, God forbid.
2:32 Silence again. And this time it holds!

Thirty minutes is definitely a new record, so I hope it means that after five straight days she's getting the idea that it's not necessary or effective to holler for an hour a day.

Is it wrong that I feel no sympathy for this crying, just mild amusement? Hey, I respond with plenty of heart when it's real crying—this is really just manipulative noise. In fact she even started the manipulation in July, at my parents' house, when she realized that telling us when she had a wet diaper might get her out of her crib to be changed. But then right after Aaron changed her she pointed down there and said, "Stinky! Stinky!" again. Liar, liar, stinkypants on fire!

We're onto you, Stinkypants. And we're willing to trade an hour of annoying noise for two hours of nap. We're the parents. We will win. Our motto: Always Be Victorious!

The Incredible Non-Sleeping Baby

We jinxed it.

Monday night remarked how lucky we are that we can just put our kid in her crib, say goodnight, and let her put herself to sleep. We smiled as we listened to our daughter softly recite her growing vocabulary in her crib before drifting off for twelve straight hours of sleep. Mama. Dada. Diddie. Baba. Baby. Baby! Babeeeeey! Whoooooo.

Tuesday she fought me a bit for naptime and vigorously battled nighttime sleep. After a couple rounds of crying for us, I had to hold her until she was essentially out.

Wednesday night—an epic battle for the ages. She had slept in late and napped a little late and probably too long (things I allowed because I was trying to hammer out a project). We usually have her up until at least 9:00 anyway (hey, it keeps her cribbed past the 8:00 a.m. hour), but this night, 9:30 was just the beginning.

Aaron did a couple rounds with her and then tried letting her cry. We’re not big cry-it-out people, but sometimes we’ll let her cry a bit if it seems she just wants to try to get you back in there. She usually gives it up in a couple minutes anyway. Well, after a good ten minutes of her crying, screaming bloody murder, and hacking (from crying so hard, plus she’s had an allergies cough), my brain was splitting open and I couldn’t possibly get any work done anyway, so I went in there. She seemed truly beyond the point of calming herself down.

Oh yeah. You would be too if you had that puke stench on you.

She’d only thrown up a little bit of milk, but it was nasty. So it necessitated lights on, wiping up, a change of clothes. And . . . let the cycle begin again. I went upstairs and heard Aaron reading to her. Rocking her. Singing to her. And the pitter-patter of tiny, hyperactive feet escaping from her room.

Eventually my turn again and I wasn’t taking any chances trying to put her down half asleep. I mean, don’t be a hero. I had to get this girl into her usual semicomatose state before I could so much as think about shifting her horizontal or taking a breath in the middle of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I thought I’d ruined it when I put her down and she started grabbing at blankets, but the kid is like a T-Rex: she can’t see you if you don’t move. I froze until I was sure she didn’t know I was still there and was just getting comfortable to sleep like she usually does, you know, two and a half hours earlier.

So we all went to bed close to midnight, and only one of us woke up before 6:00 to get some work done. We should all be up late again tonight for fireworks over the bay—but a huge fog bank is enveloping our town as we speak. In case our night reverts to a quiet night at home, I need to get the once-again-late napper up now to avert a potential repeat!

Some Firsts

Some firsts over the last couple days:

1. Anna slept downstairs in her room.
2. I fished a toy out of the toilet. I felt vaguely dirty all day. Guess we're keeping that door closed now.
3. I sorted papers to be filed for the first time in . . . eleven months. Since April. They are in piles all over my bed; I hope to restrain them in a filing cabinet soon.

Most notable is the change in sleeping venue. Anna's crib is upstairs in our bedroom rather than down in her room, but she naps in a pack-n-play in her room. We've liked having her up with us, especially when she first came home. The problem is that our upstairs is a loft, so while she's falling asleep we can't have many lights on or make much noise (although once she is out, we can watch TV or whatever). I also can't really work in my office area, and it's a pain to take things downstairs just for that time, which means I end up feeling like I'm wasting a lot of time in the evenings when I really could and should be working, paying bills, filing papers for the first time in eleven months, etc.

Two nights ago we gave it a shot and lo and behold she slept all the way through the night. It was only a little lonely when we went to bed and got up by an empty crib. Last night she was up at 4:00 a.m. and got up for good at 6:00 a.m. (slightly more bearable since we had to get up anyway). Before long we will once again engage in the ill-advised process of moving a crib over a twelve-foot loft half-wall. At least gravity will be on our side this time. But I'm still staying on the safer "upstairs" end!

Baby Breakdowns and Mommy Meltdowns

Last Friday we were excited to take Anna to her first football game, here at our very own Smallport High School. We love football season, and it was a perfect still-summer evening for small town sports.

Total disaster.

Complete baby breakdown.

Walking in, she was fascinated. Sitting down, she was fine. Meeting a new teacher friend, okay...nope, crying. Being back with us helped some, but the sun was in her eyes and what's that sudden clapping noise and is that the voice of an angry duck god crackling down upon us?! I took her for a walk in the sling and she calmed down. I eased back into the stands gradually so she could get more used to the noise and lights. For a bit she was fine on my lap and looking at friends around us. But then she got upset again and I took her out again, and this time she wasn't going to let me even think about taking her back in there. Soon she was reaching total overstimulation meltdown and we had to bail out. She shrieked as if under pain of death all the way home--thankfully only a mile--and cried all the way through being changed into pjs until we gave her a bottle.

I sat there watching Aaron hold her and wanted to cry myself. What have I done? There goes all the attachment, all the efforts and goodwill and trust undone by the betrayal of a mommy who made her stay in that horrible place until after halftime.

She had been so upset before her bottle, she threw it up all over Aaron and herself. Bad, like Frankfurt-airport bad. (That story coming soon.) He hit the shower and I gave her a bath.

Voila! She was all smiles and giggles. Oh, life is so grand and Mommy and Daddy are so funny! That is, when they're not trying to kill me via the cruel and unusual torture of watching your team lose by 40 points.

This would be the happy ending to the story except that it marked the beginning of a long week of baby breakdowns and mommy meltdowns triggered by a sudden onset of Refusal to Nap Syndrome. RNS is common in homes where one parent works at home during the day, usually intensifying dramatically as the parent's tight nonnegotiable deadline approaches.

I'd gotten a slow start on my work project--trying to get my brain re-engaged and familiar with style rules and all--and desperately needed some nice chunks of quiet concentration time. Ehhhnt, sorry, Dream Baby's not here right now; she's been replaced by Nap Nightmare Baby, who likes to be paid attention to all day and might fake falling asleep after 20 minutes of holding but will cry immediately upon contact with any form of bedding.

Mommy Meltdown #1 came Tuesday afternoon. I was going insane because I couldn't concentrate to work, I couldn't make noise doing anything around the house, I couldn't even take a much-needed nap myself. And as deadline panic approached I didn't have the time/patience to hold her all day or listen to her fuss or monkey around with letting her cry, checking in at increasing intervals, and all that--plus I'm not willing to let my new child bawl her eyes out in a playpen alone anyway, for attachment reasons. Especially after Friday night's debacle.

Tuesday Aaron came home early to save me and got her conked out downstairs somehow. Maybe there was liquor involved; I don't want to know. Wednesday was just as bad--she napped 30 minutes total, until just before our Bible study, which is not really the optimal time. Of course she was an angel for the audience. Thursday I got an hour nap out of her and just let her be awake near me. At least then she was quiet.

Now, happy ending time: With a little sleep-deprivation of my own, I got my work done on time. Today she took two naps again. Tonight she was content in my sling until well into the second quarter. And she even smiled, because we were only down by 8.