I don't care if you're cute after midnight

Last night was a giant ball of suck.

I am too wiped out to tell you why neither Josh nor I got more than 4 hours of sleep. But, if you were to guess it had something to do with the pumpkin pictured here waking up wiggly and feverish at 1am and not going back to sleep until 8:45, well, you'd be right.

Sleeplessness is a bitch

Have you read Hellhole in this week's New Yorker? Its a compelling, if awfully depressing article about how even short term stays in solitary isolation damage our brains. We're such social creatures that, if denied any human contact, we lose the ability to relate to others. POWs say solitary is just as torturous as bone-breaking physical torment.

At the risk of trivializing the subject, I want to talk for a minute about a different kind of torture: sleep deprivation. Our darling 20 month old has been moving her wake-up hour ever earlier, standing in her crib and calling "Mama" at 5, even 4am. We've been completely unsuccessful at soothing her back to sleep, and figuring that wretched rest is better than lying in bed listening to her scream bloody murder, we've brought her to bed with us for the last week or so.

But A does not curl up next to me and fall back asleep like a little angel. She climbs over me, tugs on and identifies my body parts, nestles her hard-plastic paci-mouth into my trachea and generally bugs the shit out of me until demanding "Down!" At which point Josh (bless his heart) takes her downstairs and rewards her bad behavior with an early-morning screening of Sesame Street. "Elmo!" I hear her exclaiming with delight.

Thanks to A, we're fried. Something's got to change, and I'm steeling myself for tomorrow morning, when I will be instituting "solitary confinement" in A's well-appointed baby jail. I will be strong. I will be ruthless. I will be buying earplugs.

She's lucky she's cute

There is no better recipe for family discord than two irritated, sleep-deprived parents and an overtired, overwrought toddler.

Josh thought keeping A up a little later might encourage her to sleep in a little later. Seems logical, right? Well, his experiment backfired massively. Now, instead of hearing her call out at 5:50, she's screaming her head off at 4am. Nothing soothes her except joining us (read: my boobs) in bed. And frankly, I'd like to quit the early wakings and wean the kid in one fell swoop.

I'm tired.

I'm done.

So, per Dr Weissbluth, we're reversing course and moving her bedtime up tonight. And again when we turn our clocks back this weekend. If she can sleep until a halfway decent hour, Josh and I will be happy to get up with her and keep her from obsessing about what's under my shirt.

Methinks she's not a morning person

Z's taken to waking up with a growl. The kind of whiny growl you might expect to hear from an unfed lion cub. This guttural noise is accompanied by squinty glares, put-upon flops from one side of her bed to the next and pointy grunts that I'm supposed to translate to "I'm cold. Get me something with long sleeves. Nooooo, not a sweater!!! A long-sleeved pajama top. Not that one!!! Now put it on me because I've lost the ability to move my limbs overnight."

Demanding that she frame her requests in clear English (preferably preceded by "please") transforms the angry lion cub into something far worse: an incoherent, inconsolable pillow-soaker. If I close the door so that my eardrums don't split and I don't lose my temper, she ratchets it up a notch, hyperventilating and hiccuping her misery. Over what, exactly? That never becomes clear. Perhaps waking up to the sounds of me dressing her sister in the next room awakens the green-eyed monster within ("Mommy's spending time with my little sister instead of me. And it's not fair!!!)

After 5 minutes of howling (and a sharp rebuke from Josh that only accelerates her tantrum) I go back in, give her a hug and help her into a long-sleeved pajama top. She skulks around upstairs while I shower (baby sister and Daddy are downstairs having breakfast), and by the time we come down she's totally fine.

If this is what wake-up time's like for an almost 4-year-old, I can't wait to see what the morning rush will bring when she's 14.

My evenings are my own again

I've discovered a silver lining to the dreaded nap-dropping. Now that Z's not sleeping at 1pm, I'm putting her to bed an hour earlier. Which means she's still happy and well-rested (see left) and the house belongs to me and Josh from 7:45 on! Mwahahahah!

Crying it out

I know sleep training works. I know. It's just so damned hard to listen to her cry. When I'm tired. And Josh is a stone. And Z might wake up. And require me to change her sheets.

It's so easy to head across the hall, half-lidded to re-paci/pat/rock/nurse her back to sleep. To tell myself she's just a baby. It's fine. It's only once a night.

Until it's every 25 minutes. All f-ing night long. The kid's got us trained. I cry, they come. So tonight I put her to bed awake. I read her a story after she fell asleep on the boob and placed her into her crib sleepy but not asleep.

And she cried bloody murder. Josh, Z and I retreated to the basement with the baby monitor. I'd turned the sound off, but I couldn't tear my eyes away from the bouncing red light that indicated major sound in the nursery. The angry red lights flickered for 25 long, heart-rending minutes before the poor baby gave up and went to sleep.

Here's to hoping she stays asleep ... or at least doesn't cry quite so long at 2am tonight.

WED. MORNING UPDATE! A woke up briefly at 10pm and fussed for about 30 seconds. Then there wasn't another peep from her until 5am. And she slept without her beloved paci!

Jetlag, without the travel

I caked on the undereye concealer and I'm on coffee #3, but I think I need toothpicks to keep these peepers open.

Z had a bed-wetting accident last night around midnight. She couldn't fall asleep again, and Josh and I took turns comforting her from midnight until 1am. Well, I comforted--he lectured, cajoled and yelled at her to quit crying and go to sleep already. Eventually we caved and let her join us in the big bed, where she kept me from sleeping until around 3am. I slept beautifully from 3 until 4...when Baby A woke up. I couldn't take her to our bed to nurse since it was far too crowded, so I fed her in the rocker, changed her and put her back in her crib. I caught a few more winks between 4:30 and 5:45, when the baby woke up for good.

I'm seriously feeling it today.

Late-night parenting

"Uhhhhghh..."

I looked at the alarm clock: 10:50pm. Maybe Z's eyes crusted shut again? I pulled on my pajama pants and headed into her room.

But her bed was empty. She wasn't on the floor next to her bed either! I panicked for a nanosecond before my eyes registered her form against the chair in the corner. She was kneeling on the floor with her head resting on Tallulah, who was curled up in the chair, sleeping as she always does in Z's room.

I picked Z up and asked her if she needed to go potty (she's back in Pull-Ups after wetting the bed for a week straight, but that's fodder for a future post). She murmured no and lay limp in my arms as I carried her back to her bed and pulled a blanket over her.

Was she sleepwalking? Did she wake up and decide she wanted to read a book or visit the cat and then fall asleep mid-trip? I'm not sure I'll ever know, but she was still sleeping soundly when I got up to feed Baby A at 3am and get up for the day at 6. In fact, I had to wake her groggy, cranky self up at 7 so she could be dressed and fed before preschool.

Sometimes milestones suck

Like My Toddler's First Nightmare.

Yes, Josh and I were up for a couple hours between midnight and 2am tending to a hysterical but lucid toddler. Z told us "something was jumping on my bed," and after we turned down her one-hundredth request to sleep in our bed, we let her spend the rest of the night on her floor.

On top of that, I had a nasty case of food poisoning. Which meant I was alternating between comforting my daughter and racing for the bathroom.

We're much, much better today.

When the clock strikes midnight...

Last night. 11:56pm. I hear my daughter call out from across the hall, "I need to throw up." I'm out of bed in flash. She seems cool and comfortable as I pick her up for a hug.

"Do you want to rock on the chair or go throw up in the toilet, Z?"
"Throw up in the toilet."

She leads over the can, dipping her head in so far I can hear her bangs swish in the water. I pull her up to wipe off her face and... she vomits all over herself, me and the bathroom floor. Bright red pomegranate juice and pizza puke. I strip off her pajamas and we sit on the side of the tub. She's got her head resting on my shoulder when the second wave hits. I catch some of it in the bowl we use for rinsing off shampoo.

A cool sponge bath and fresh pajamas and she's back in bed.

12:36. "Throw up. Throw up, Mommy." This time Josh races to her room. Only she's already soaked her pillow. As Josh wraps up the sheets with the clothes soiled earlier and heads downstairs to start a load of laundry, I encourage Z to drink a few sips of water. We cuddle, clean off her face and read a story. She willingly lies down in bed.

This time Z sleeps peacefully through the night, but we don't. We're too tense, listening for the next summons.

Little night owls

I just returned from a late evening run to Target, and I was surprised how many toddlers I saw up and about, running errands with their parents at 9pm. I would understand if the kids were with a single parent since it probably doesn't seem worth the money or hassle to pay a babysitter for chance to buy laundry detergent in peace, but all of the kids were with both of their parents.

Do these children sleep in? Do their parents have jobs that make sleeping in late a possibility? Do they make up for their late nights with long afternoon naps? I know that children's bedtimes are dictated by culture, and many folks have told me that in Italy and Spain, kids are out at restaurants with their parents at 10pm. But given how many jobs, preschools and daycare centers open for business between 8 and 9am in this country, I wonder if burning the midnight oil is such a smart move for such small children.

Another milestone

Josh disassembled Z's crib yesterday and I tucked her into her "big girl" bed. The evening wasn't without drama--Z cried pitifully for her crib for about 15-20 minutes. But when she realized it wasn't coming back, she put her head on her pillow and slept soundly through the night.

I don't know if it helped, but an hour or so before bedtime, I took Z upstairs and we spent a few minutes instructing her stuffed animals on "the magic rules" (Z's words, not mine). Each of the animals had the following drilled into his or her furry skull, "Rule number one: stay in bed! Rule number two: go to sleep!"

Now I need to do something about those big, empty walls behind her.

The toddler bed transition

We picked up a hand-me-down toddler bed and mattress from a co-worker of mine yesterday morning. Z was over the moon with excitement as she watched her mommy clean it and her daddy assemble it. But come naptime, she just couldn't resist her newfound freedom and spent the full 2 hours hopping in and out and generally making mischief. When I finally called off the nap at 3pm, she was standing on the rocker-glider, changing CDs in her boombox. All of her toys were out of the toy basket and books were piled up willy-nilly.

"Z," I said, "What's the rule for your new big-girl bed?"
"Stay in bed," she replied sheepishly.

Now what's amazing is she didn't act like a kid who missed her nap. In fact, she was a complete angel as we left her with a brand-new 15-year-old babysitter, offering us each a smile and a kiss bye-bye.

And if you're wondering, we didn't leave the toddler bed in her room for the babysitter to have to deal with. She slept in her crib. We're going to take down the crib and replace it with the toddler bed Monday night, before she goes to daycare on Tuesday. That way she can sleep in it in the dark for a few nights straight and hopefully establish some good habits before she's again faced with the temptations of an unchained naptime.

Angel baby returns

Z put up 10 minutes of fuss before retiring last night, but she slept solidly from 7:45pm to 6:00am. And she didn't wake me and Josh up until 6:20, opting to play with her aquarium (which, by the way, she has loved since she was 2 months old). When she finally shouted "Ma-Ma!" it was because, "I went poopy in my diaper. Poopy and pee-pee."

Hallelujah!

I deserve a sleep refund

Last night was one of those nights. You know, one of those nights you think you're done with when your kid turns 6 or 7 months old and you've read Dr. Weissbluth cover to cover and done the sleep training thing and--by G-d--it worked?!?

Yeah? Well, last night our angelic 25 month old channeled her inner 2 month old, waking up every hour or so. Only, instead of whimpering for boobie, she would call out--in clear, increasingly loud tones, "Mommy! Ma-Ma! Ma-Maaaaaaaa! I wanna cuddle in the chair with Ma-Ma! I wanna cuddle in the dark! Da-Da! Daddymommy! Mommmmmeeeeeee!"

Overcome with exhaustion by 4:30am, I gave in and brought her to our bed, first eliciting a promise that she would "sleep quietly with no talking." A promise so quickly broken. I was poked and prodded. My hair was pulled and twisted. My pillow was stolen and returned damp with drool.

And then the cat went apeshit, tearing around the bedroom like there was a bonafide mouse in the house (which there wasn't). And so went any lingering hopes of getting Z to sleep. Josh was an angel, though. He took Z downstairs for some early morning PBS Kids so that I could sleep from 5:30 to 6:20.

Lucky Adriana. I'm sure Z will be a real treat at day care this morning.

Sleepless in the suburbs

Last night was not pretty. Usually I fall asleep the second before my head hits the pillow, but yesterday I was tossing and turning until about midnight, when I finally fell into a really vivid dream involving co-workers, Josh's old bandmates and an elaborate office dining hall where all the food on the menu was free.

Then, at 1am, all hell broke loose. Z awakened with a scream and the next two hours brought back memories of newbornhood. You know, the wee hours when the moment after the crying ceases you find yourself holding your breath, unable to relax because your worried it will just start up again. Josh and I took turns going to her and settling her down, only to have the wailing resume within 10 minutes. On my visits, she was weirdly talkative, speaking clearly but not making a lot of sense. ("My cheeks! Oh, now they're better. My feet are better too. Mommy read a story in the crib. My new diaper is fresh and clean. Daddy's having lunch downstairs. Mommy's hair.")

I don't know if it was night terrors or the same restlessness that was afflicting me, but she eventually whimpered herself to sleep. She caught up on missed sleep by waking up late (and much happier) this morning.

Oh, Josh called me on the train this morning to report the following conversation between Z and himself:
"What are you thinking about, Daddy?"
"I'm thinking about driving. Are you thinking, Z?"
"Yes."
"What are you thinking about?"
"I'm thinking about Mommy!"