Saturday, August 6, 2011

Whooosh!

What was that sound? It was me throwing in the towel. Greetings from The Husband's home town. We're here visiting his parents and grandmother. Last summer we had great success leaving home at bed time, allowing The Parasite to fall asleep in the car and then transferring her to her travel crib when we arrived. This year... not so much.

For starters, we left later than expected. Then she fought sleep until about two hours past her bedtime, meaning she only got two hours in the car. We arrived at midnight and she was awake before we finished pulling into the driveway. Awake and cranky. Then she was awake and happy, which was worse. There is a house full of people who were probably none too pleased with the sound of a howling two year old. In our defence, we did the best we could. Putting her in her own bed, bringing her into our bed, up, down, all around - you name it, we tried it. In vain.

Then I thought of our dinnertime approach: she doesn't have to eat if she doesn't want to, but she does have to remain (relatively) quiet in her chair while everyone else does. So I flipped on the lamp, grabbed a bunch of her toys and books and put them in the crib, and told her that she didn't have to sleep if she didn't want to, but she did have to sit quietly in her bed while mommy and daddy slept. Sure, she was awake until 4am and our sleep was crappy because the light was on and there was a toddler playing (relatively) quietly in the room. And yes, when she did finally fall asleep it was on top of a pile of toys. But it was better than the NOTHING we were all going to get if we kept fighting to get her to sleep on our terms.

The lesson here? Even the littlest of people can march to the beat of their own drummer. Sometimes it's best to just let them go with it.

3 comments:

http://abebedorespgondufo.blogs.sapo.pt/ said...

Very good blog.

Jo said...

yep

The Host said...

Abe, thank you for stopping by!

Jo, so simple yet so difficult! :)