Bedtime Routines

By day, she's an adorable little girl, pretty cool clothes, curly blond hair and big blue eyes. She says the most adorable things. Like yesterday, she looked at Grandma's shoes and said, "Grandma, mommy have same shoes," and then ran inside I got them. Pretty good for a 2 and a half year old, they were very similar, outside of the color, but who cares? She eats, she takes a pretty good nap, she doesn't mind when I leave for work and she's mostly nice to her brother. At night though, the wild beast emerges and my husband and I look at each other as if to ask, "Who is this?"

Our routine has been dinner, bath and bedtime. Because our first-born's bedtime routine sometimes exceeds 45 minutes (yup, books, stories, then it starts - Can you lay with me/send mommy in/send daddy in/give me a drink/I have to pee?) when our daughter was born, we made a conscious effort for her to have pretty much zero routine. Have the bottle and go in the crib. Usually awake. And it worked for us, until now.

Last night, we ate dinner and then she burst out crying hysterically at the mention of a bath. She now doesn't like the faucet on, which is semi-understandable because it is pretty loud. But, her new rule, which she screamed and cried for a good while, is NO TOYS IN THE BATH. Yes, zero. They have to be outside of the tub. Not even in the bag in the tub, but truly outside of the tub. This is reminiscent of when she was petrified of the bath after she pooped during one, but that's neither here nor there. We complied with her rule (anything to stop the crying), she took a bath and was herself again. Until someone mentioned the dreaded word - BEDTIME.

Hysteria. We read books. Two to be exact. And twice each. Dora and Sesame Street. Then she decided she needed socks. Of course, the white socks that she was wearing weren't good. She needed the Elmo socks. I'm sure you've already guessed that they were in the laundry. And I don't usually do laundry, so she was pretty much out of luck. Crying again. Finally we found socks that were okay - they were pink ("my favorite color") so she was pretty happy with it. Almost ready to go into the crib, but no, the wrong baby is in there. The pink baby is in the crib, of course, because she's been sleeping with that baby for about a month, and she wanted the white baby. Where's the white baby? It's downstairs. So I leave her in her room and go downstairs to get the baby. She then decides that the baby's face is dirty and we have to clean it. Took out the wipes, wiped the baby's face and then the baby was totally ready for bed. Oh wait, we have to pick out a CD to listen to. She decides that she wants the "orange CD". What's the problem? We don't have an orange CD. We have a purple CD, a name CD and a few white ones, but no orange one. So trying not to lose my patience, we put on the purple CD and she goes in the crib. Quietly, no crying and I think I'm in the clear.

So hubby and I sit down to catch up on Army Wives (new favorite show, by the way) and of course, the crying starts. I'm done, so it's his turn. He's in there for about 10 minutes going through the same thing I just went through with her - change the socks, change the CD, clean the baby. Finally, he's out and she's still crying. At this point, we decide to just let her cry it out. After about 5 minutes, she's still crying and as we sit down, he says, "I think you're making a mistake letting her cry."

Yes, he did. He really did. He really said that. And as if that wasn't bad enough, he didn't understand why I got pissed off and why I went into her room. That was like saying, "Hey, you're the worst mother in the world, but keep doing what you're doing." UGGGGGH.

The end result was, I did go in to her room, we changed the CD AGAIN, and she finally laid down and went to sleep. Total time spent, about an hour and a half. And not a fun hour and a half.

I hope that she goes back to her regular bedtime routine of pretty much nothing. A book then the crib then sleeping for about 12 hours. Just when you get used to a routine, these kids go and change it up on you. Hoping that tomorrow night goes a little bit easier....

Star of the Day

"Why aren't you listening?" This has become my mantra to my 5 year old son. Lately he's been pretty much ignoring everything we say. If he's tapping and we say, "Stop tapping", he does it again. If he's running around the house and we say, "Stop running around the house," he runs one more time. If he's jumping on the couch and we say, "Stop jumping on the couch," he jumps a few more time. If he's...okay. I'm sure you get it.

The "stop jumping/running/yelling/spinning" is usually followed by, "Did you hear me?" Of course he did, and then we talk about going to the doctor and getting his hearing checked. "I heard you though!" Exactly! So why didn't you listen??

After a not-so-great-listening weekend last weekend, we decided that we would implement a rewards system. For every day that he is a good listener, he gets a star. After 5 stars, Daddy will take him to Dave & Busters. The first question he asked, "Do the 5 starts have to be in a row?" Smart kid, right? "Yes," we told him, "they have to be in a row."

Day 1 was good. He listened to the babysitter, didn't torture his sister too much, listened to me when I got home and was generally pretty good. Ahh, I thought, we're on our way.

Day 2 was good too. When I got home, babysitter said he was great. He had a playdate over and was pretty good, included his sister, got along with his friend, didn't whine. Well, whined once. But in the scheme of things, and thinking about our weekend, I'll take it. Wow! This is all we had to do? I should have done this reward thing earlier, it's working great. Am I going to have to bribe my kid fo the rest of his life? If all it takes is Dave & Busters (and not a car at any point), I'm good. Let's hear it for bribery!

Day 3. Not so great. First he threw up on the floor. Obviously, having nothing to do with listening, but I thought I'd throw that in there. Puking episode over and confirming that there's no fever and he's not sick, he went to his friend's house on a playdate. When he was picked up, we learned he did not listen to the friend's babysitter. She is a lovely woman, and described her day as "sometimes challenging." Oy, that's not good. What else did he do? He didn't listen. He whined. He didn't want to eat what she served for lunch. He spit on his friend. Seriously, this is a good kid. He spit on his friend? Are you sure? Spit like saliva from his mouth??

I spoke to him on the phone. "Mommy, I'm not getting a star today," he said, clearly fighting back tears. "Why?" I asked. "I didn't listen today, it wasn't a good day." I almost felt bad. Not bad enough to give him a star anyway, but still bad.

Later we talked about his day. I was much less concerned with the not listening than I was with the spitting. Who spits on someone? I cringe just thinking about it. He said that his friend "was crying, and I was just trying to help." Now, this might make sense to a 5 year old mind. It might even sound like it could get him out of trouble. But this didn't make any sense to my 30-somthing year old mind after a lousy day of work at a job that I am teetering on leaving at any given moment. "Huh?" I asked. "What do you mean, how does spitting on someone help?" He really couldn't explain it, but insisted that was what it was.

End result of the day? No star for the day. No tv or computer for the night. But we didn't dwell on it. We didn't talk about it anymore. He played Shrek Operation with Daddy and went to bed for the night. I checked on him when he was sleeping and felt this incredible surge of love for him. You know the feeling, when you see your kids and they are fast asleep, not moving, not talking and not terrorizing anyone. You question how could this little angel ever do anything wrong?

Tomorrow will be better, I thought. He's such a good boy. When I get home from work, we'll see if he gets a star today.

Have No Time

For the past week or so, I've been trying to remember that I started this blog. I try and remember that it's fun to have interesting things to write about, so I've been bringing my camera around with me and taking pictures. I took a picture of my dog wearing safety goggles, which was pretty funny. I took a picture of the yummm chocolates that Disney World sent me for being a mommy blogger. I took a picture of the great books that Hachette Books sent me to say Happy Mother's Day, as well as my new imac and the piece of cheese my son ate without taking off the wax. So where are these pictures and blog posts, you might be wondering? Still in my camera, and still in my head, respectively.

You see the problem is, I HAVE NO TIME. This is not different from any other mom in America, so I'm not asking for special treatment. But seriously, I have no time. Sometimes I think that if I didn't have to sleep, I'd be able to get everything done that I wanted to. If, on average, I spend 7 hours each night sleeping, theoretically, I would have time to get another full time job, if I didn't need to sleep. How much could I get done in a straight 7 hours when everyone in my house is sleeping? I can't even think about it, the prospect of it is too exciting.

Which leads me to another point. When I was younger and in college, most nights I wouldn't even go out until 11pm. Hmm...why didn't I need to sleep then?

And here's the last point. I never thought I would see the day where getting something organized was one of my biggest dreams. I used to have high aspirations - become a partner in a big accounting firm, earn alot of money, have a great family. Of course the great family part has become a reality, but the most exciting part of my night tonight was putting all of the clean laundry away the same day it was washed!

My headache and I are going to sleep now.....