Flashback (What a feeling!)

[judecorp]

Punk was having a heck of a time settling down for nap this afternoon. It's probably because of the low-key morning we had due to the heat, the humidity, and the fact that I needed to bring my car in for scheduled maintenance. Not enough exercise and all that. So anyway, she was an absolute toddler wreck at lunch time (deliberately being a rascal) and did not fall asleep at naptime, and in fact carried on for about an hour and 15 minutes playing, knocking around, talking, whatever. I went in once with the Voice of Doom but all that bought me was 20 minutes of quiet before the carrying on resumed.

At about 1:20 I tried a different tactic, went in there, scooped her up with me in the rocking chair, wrapped her up in a blanket, and rocked. Rocked like we haven't rocked in about 7 months. She tried to play at first, but I let her know that the rocking chair was for sleeping with Mama and if she wasn't sleeping, she was going back in the crib alone. And we rocked, in the A/C (glorious!).

It was such a blast from the past, rocking with my baby girl, looking through a sliver of open eye to see her start blinking, then more blinking, then the long blinks, and then out like a light. For a few moments I got to hold her there, like a baby instead of an ornery little girl, stroking her hand and kissing the top of her head.

Sometimes every kid needs a little Mama.

Comments

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

Aww. That's sweet.

Remind me, how old is Punk right now? Give a strung out and desperate mama some hope that my kid too will someday cut this crap out and learn to handle the sleep thing cuz I'm really fed up with this.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

She's 25 months, will be 26 months on the 1st. (So, 2 years 2 months, though I know you can do the math.)

We started turning our first sleep corner around 18 months, when I started talking to her about falling asleep on her own in the crib. But she was still waking once a night (at least, but usually once) up until maybe 22 months? 23 months? It all gets lost in a sleep-deprived haze. When she woke up once a night, I took her to bed with me and she typically slept the rest of the night, but kept me up with the flipping, flopping, kicking, etc. She also woke up earlier in our room than she does in her room, because of Jen's alarm and the lack of black-out curtains.

This probably doesn't help at all, but I actually didn't do anything to help her STTN, she just mysteriously started doing it around 22 or 23 months, and by 23.5 months, was doing it almost every night. Every once in a while she will wake up and call out for me, and I will fetch her (she did this once last week) and bring her to bed, but it's a pretty rare occurrence these days.

I will say that I also resorted to some bribery. "If you sleep all night in your crib, when you wake up you can watch television."

[sassywoman.livejournal.com]

I love it when they let us see that glimpse of baby every now and again!

[kaleidoscopeeye.livejournal.com]

Awe, I am a little bit jealous that you were able to do that.

[spleazeball.livejournal.com]

Sometimes every Mama needs a little kid.

[shadist.livejournal.com]

Awww, that's beautiful.

[tea-soaked.livejournal.com]

You know what, Carys is kind of going through something at bedtime and it has resulted in a little wrapping and rocking with mama too - and it's nice and it has helped her.