Crying It Out

In preparation for Quynh's move to the toddler (!) room at the end of August, her teacher strongly suggested that we get her to sleep through the night now, so she'll be rested enough during the days to drop her morning nap. (A day in the life of a toddler is full of play dough, circle time, climbing, running, jumping, and there is no opportunity for morning nap.) So to prevent her from being the toddler who routinely falls asleep in her lunch, we decided we had better get her (and me!) some solid nighttime sleep.

But how? Quynh's teacher basically told us to shit or get off the pot with the whole co-sleeping thing. She suggested we either (1) put Quynh in her crib at night and leave here there and not go in at all when she cries or (2) buy bed rails and let her sleep with us all night long. Neither option really appealed to me, but I certainly want her in her own crib. So I decided to review the more gentle options for achieving that goal.

I went back to the books I had poured over when Tai was tiny. First I read about one extreme, written by the woman who thinks babies should never ever cry, and that progress toward better sleeping should be measured every 10 days to look for slow but steady progress. Ugh. The book included photos of her 5 kids all snuggling together on a giant bed in the "sleeping room." This woman might be a little nuts.

Then I read about the other extreme, where you plop your baby in the crib, close the door, and don't go back in until the morning, no matter what. The book actually says there is no limit on how long to let them cry and if they vomit from crying too hard just go in, clean it up, and then leave again.

Seriously? These are my two options?

Then I found the book that claims to be the "middle of the road" approach. Sounds perfect for me. I pride myself on my wishy-washy-middle-of-the-road-ness. I cracked open this book at 9:15pm on Saturday, but by 9:30 I was falling asleep and had not yet read the details of this sleep training method. I decided I'd read it on Sunday and we'd start our new plan (whatever it was to be) Sunday night.

I hit the pillow and feel deeply asleep. So deeply, in fact, that Minh told me the next day that I missed Quynh crying and fussing for an entire hour. He was still up watching TV in the living room and took my staying in the bedroom to mean that I'd decided we were going to let her cry it out. But I was really just too tired to wake. Yay for parent-to-parent communication.

She woke 3 more times that night, which I heard. At 2:30, 3:30, and 5:30am she woke and cried for 5 minutes each time. Then went back to sleep. Sweet.

Sunday I realized that we had accidentally started a cry-it-out program. Not what I intended, but I figured that we'd better stick with what we started. So last night we did it again. Not sure if we slept through any crying early in the night, but she did wake at 2:30 and cried for 5 minutes. Then at 4:30 she screamed for 10 minutes and I *almost* went to her. But then she found a nuk (she has about 6 of them in her crib) and settled back down. At 6am she squawked and I ran in to her, scooped her up and nursed her in the glider for about 15 solid minutes. All the while she was staring up at me with those huge dark eyes as if to say, "Where were you last night?"

The books, and Quynh's teacher, claim that this method works fast -- in a few days -- so I'm really hoping that tonight is the last rough night where I have to lay in bed, listen to her scream, and watch her on the video monitor to make sure she's OK. I'm excited at the prospect of "fixing" her sleeping habits, but I do worry about what she thinks when she's crying so hard and no one comes to comfort her. I find that part very sad.

Wish us luck tonight.

First Purchase

Some folks say that a mis-behaving toddler is a bored, un-challenged toddler. So, in a recent attempt to make our lives a little smoother, we created a "chore chart" for Tai. The chores themselves are very simple (he is only 3, after all) and include things like: feed the pets, clear the dishes from the table after breakfast, brush teeth, use the potty, and get dressed. Those last three in particular must be done with cooperation in order to get the check-mark on the chore chart. If we have a bare-assed kid running around the house singing, "you can't catch me" while I chase him down with underwear and jeans clenched in my fist, there will be no check-mark next to "get dressed".

So, what do the check-marks mean? For a 3-year-old, pride in a job well done does not seem to be incentive enough for good behavior. So, we thought about some sort of sticker chart or tally of check marks that you can turn in for a special treat. But he's kinda over the whole sticker thing. And the kid already gets a ton of special treats (edible, watchable, you name it). So we decided on cold hard cash. Five cents for each chore.

Tai already had two piggy banks, given to him as Christmas gifts. So now he can finally use them. We've designated one as "savings" and one as "checking" (spending money). We've had this system in place for about 2 weeks and today he emptied his checking account into a plastic sandwich baggie (maybe he needs a change purse?) and made his very first purchases.

Despite his claims that he was going to buy "a whole box full of toys" he ended up spending his money at the Amherst Farmer's Market--where boxes of toys are scarce, at best. After turning his nose up at fresh baked cookies and pastries, he considered buying a tomato seedling (before he remembered that Daddy already had that covered). So he purchased a $2.50 organic blueberry smoothie (which he shared with his sister, without hesitation) and tossed two fist-fulls of change into the tip jar of a little 2-person-folk-band. I wholeheartedly approve of his decisions.

In the end, he came home with about $2.00 of unspent money and no box of toys, but he doesn't seem to mind.

Tackling the Next Big Topic

Death: Already covered. Next: Religion.

Q: What do you get when you cross and Atheist with a Buddhist?

A: A very confused toddler.

Last weekend Tai went to the carnival with a good friend of his. On the way to the carnival they were excitedly discussing the rides that they would go on and ended up having a conversation that went like this:

N: When we go on the ferris wheel, we'll go way up high in the trees. We can look for birds and bird nests. God lives in the trees.

T: Huh??

N: God lives in the trees because He can hear everything. Did you know that, Tai?

T: No, I haven't seen that movie.