Getting Played

Oh, we've been played. Yes, friends, in Two-Year-Old Wisecracker v. Dumb Parents, we've lost badly. Little Nattie has learned how to work the system when it comes to bedtime -- but we're finally on to her and turning things around. We hope.

Last week, Gavin, Natalie and I were all fighting an awful cold and on top of that, she cut two bottom molars. It wasn't pretty. By Easter evening her temp peaked, we packed up early and headed home to give her a coOhol (Gavin just typed that with his foot...I had wanted to type "cool") bath and put her to bed.

Monday she seemed much better until I tried putting her down for her afternoon nap. She remembered how she'd napped with mommy the day before (seriously the first time I've actually taken a nap with her in the bed...not that I haven't tried, but she usually was all squirmy and we'd just put her back into the crib.)

She sobbed, screamed and shook Monday until I caved and all three of us climbed into the big bed for an hour and a half. "That was easy," I naively thought.

Come Monday night bedtime we had a screaming maniac on our hands. She screamed "I want Mommy!!!" at the top of her lungs (and various other angry phrases), shook her crib rails, cried a puddle of tears and snot and punctuated it all with blood-curdling "ahhhhhh"s.

"Oh!," you're saying. "That's what all that noise was that I heard at my house 200 miles away!"

Yes, that was Natalie. It went on for a half hour before I caved and checked on her. Crap. That made it about 10 times worse. I went back in to rock her for five minutes...peaceful quiet minutes as she snuggled in my arms.

Knowing what was coming next, as soon as she started shaking as we approached the crib, I quickly tucked her in and dove out of the room, closing the door behind me. The screaming reached a whole new level. Another 20 minutes and the little hellion was finally asleep.

Here I thought she still was sick and hurting, despite the dose of ibuprofen and 1.5 hour calming bedtime routine. I don't believe in making kids "cry it out" when they're sick or in pain, that's just cruel. So I gave her the benefit of the doubt. That is, until she slept two hours at daycare the next day...daycare where she normally sleeps only an hour. So without medicine and in a class with 13 other kids resting on tiny cots, she didn't make a peep and slept for two hours.

Oooh, busted, Natalie!

So, it's been an interesting, albeit loud, past few evenings in our house. She's still screaming, hollering, shaking and snotting every time we put her in her crib. I'm chalking it up to a phase and praying for it to be a short one!

And I think I'll invest in a good pair of earplugs!