During Annie's prayers tonight, "And thank you for Ellie, I love her SO MUCH! And I do love Dad too." (In a 'yeah, I guess, if you insist, I do kinda love him' way. She left me out completely though, so I guess I can't tease Greg too much about it.) "And thank you we got to go for chicken nuggets and to Wal-Mart, and we get to have a new house that has toys and a basement toy."
Then, we put her to bed. She was no longer in a praying kinda mood. She spent a little while screaming at us, angrily. (Like a really angry little chipmunk who's sucked down helium then just lit into someone who really pissed it off. It amuses me. Is that bad?) Then a little while of sobbing and calling out, "Where are my Mommy and my Daddy?" (Over and over again. It almost makes me feel sad. It's pretty effective. Much more so than her shrieking at me like some kind of andry woodland creature.) And now she's just sitting there in the dark, reading to her dolls from a Winnie the Pooh book she requested after her crying long enough (and waking up Ellie with said screaming) warranted a visit from Dad who was all, "What do you want Annie?" He's nicer than me. I just yell from my room, "You're in bed Annie, you're gonna be there 'til tomorrow! Good night!"
My approach backfired on us last night though. She screamed for, I don't know, 40 minutes or so, while Greg and I were downstairs packing. Everytime Greg was Mr. Nice Guy, asking me, "Should I go check on her, see what she wants?" my response was on the opposite end of the spectrum, "No, she can just fall asleep!" (I'm the sleep Nazi, making both of my poor children scream for long periods of time until they conk out from exhaustion. This was by no means my first choice. This came after months and months of being Miss Push Over who never got to sleep and almost lost her mind and would hold and rock and cuddle and shush and do all manner of crazy 'anything to get this kid to sleep' kinda things that still took over an hour to work. Then she suddenly decided that even though the crying-it-out thing was a load of crap and didn't work, since her kids never did give up the screaming and just learn to sleep, it worked just as well as anything 'nicer', and at least this way she could get laundry done and dishes started while they shrieked from their cribs for an hour.) Of course, last night, Greg finally 'caved' and went to check on Annie. Who, of course, had a poopy diaper and at this point a very sore butt. Bad Mom. We need to work out some kind of 'code word' with the kid, so I know when she actually needs me to come check on her.
2 comments:
Familiar story. Well, not the screaming all the time. My boys fall asleep just fine, but I do wish I knew when they actually needed me and not when they just want someone to cry/whine at. Don't feel bad for doing the cry in you bed thing. I always say, "if you are going to cry out here, then you can cry in your bed." (where I don't have to hear as much). Dontcha just love being the mom?
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