Wednesday, June 22, 2011

The Little Things

Petunia's bedtimes have gotten... unpredictable. She's usually pretty easy to get down. We read stories, turn lights out, rock for 10-15 minutes, and put her in her crib. But occasionally, it all goes haywire and she's a bear to get down. This no doubt coincides with some developmental leap- the glory of the second child is that these random sleep freak outs don't freak me out, so I haven't researched it obsessively and don't really know whether we're at a particular milestone or not. All I know is that suddenly, we're rocking her for 30 minutes, and then she's arching her back, whining and shaking her head no (all with her eyes closed, of course), when we stand up from the rocking chair and head towards her crib.  So we've started just taking her into our room and lying down with her.

Normally, we're partial night cosleepers. Petunia goes down in her crib and then joins us in our bed when she wakes up. The first time around the sleeping casino, I would have fought this change to being a full night cosleeper. This time, I've just shrugged and let it happen. And noted that sometimes, when she's in our bed from the start, she doesn't wake up in the night at all. Bonus!

So we're rolling with things on the sleep front. Until last night, when she changed things up again. She didn't want to go to sleep, full stop. If I took her into our bed, she thrashed and kicked and played and giggled. We tried watching some TV with her (that worked the last time she went through an "I don't want to go to sleep phase"). No dice. Finally, two hours after her usual bedtime, I put her in her crib, wide awake, and walked out of the room. She cried a very little, then started talking to herself, and then fell asleep. Hubby, who thinks we should try this more often, gave me a look of triumph.

But then tonight, she fell asleep in my arms after 10 minutes of rocking. So who knows? I think we just need to look at every night's bedtime as a new adventure.

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Aside from the bedtime fun, Petunia is pretty darn cute right now. She's talking more and more, although she is not always easy to understand. The signs she knows help- otherwise there is no way I would have deciphered her pronunciation of "cereal". But there is still no guarantee that we will understand what she wants. Frankly, I think she knows more signs than we do. So when we do figure it out, and get her what she wants, she gets a big grin, bounces a little, and says "yeah, yeah!" That almost makes up for the screaming when we don't figure it out.

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She's also started giving out kisses. She leans in, and smacks her lips together right next to your cheek. A sweet toddler kiss cures many woes, let me tell you.

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Speaking of sweet kisses, Pumpkin has been handing them out, too. She'll throw a massive tantrum about something that is trivial to us but very important to her- like whether or not she has to share her baby doll stroll with Petunia (the answer is yes, if she is going to leave it in the living room)- and then a short time later come give me a hug and a kiss and tell me she loves me. I suspect this is fairly normal four year old behavior, but the hug and kiss never fail to make me forgive her for the tantrum.

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Pumpkin is a snacker, much like me. She eats small meals, and needs her snacks (she gets a morning, afternoon, and before bed snack). Petunia is not so dependent on the snacks. She eats far better at meal time, and snack time is hit or miss with her.

We still always offer snack, though, and she'll often accept a few bites, especially if I'll hold her on my lap while she eats. Tonight, she ate a cracker and a few yogurt melts, and then arranged the rest into canapes that could only appeal to a toddler:



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When Pumpkin was roughly Petunia's age, my sister gave her a Seek & Slide in the Desert book. The premise is simple- there is a small amount of text, and then pictures of animals found in various deserts, hidden behind a sliding piece of cardboard with the name of the animal on it.

Pumpkin loved that book, and now Petunia does, too. Like all books they love, it has grown a bit stale for the parents.

Luckily, our copy has a doozy of a typo on the Australian Outback page:


It feels like something from a Monty Python sketch. I chuckle to myself every time I see it. It is the little things that keep you sane as a parent.

(By the way, the animal that is actually hidden behind the "Goldfish" text is a kookaburra. That just makes it funnier to me.)

10 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:02 AM

    Sleep is awesome!

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  2. Shows you how slow my mind is in the morning, I couldn't pick out the typo for the life of me! LOL!

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  3. Having just experienced the longest day of the year, and perhaps not coincidentally, several nights in a row where my same-aged DD refused to go to sleep until after 9:30pm, when the sun was finally setting.. let's just say I feel your pain! ;)

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  4. the milliner1:33 PM

    I can't believe the days of guessing what DS is pronouncing are quickly coming to an end for us. It really does feel triumphant when there is success in translation, doesn't it?

    What would kill me were the times DS would say something, in his pronunciation, and I would know that I knew what he was saying as he'd said it before, but I couldn't recall it in that instant. I felt so bad for just plain not remembering.

    Hope the sleep front evens out soon for Petunia, and obviously for you. On our side, I may have cracked the mystery of why DS started waking up at 4:45/5am ish again. Being newly undies-initiated in the day (no accidents! yay! he gets it!), I think he's able to hold his pee longer at night and so he wakes up early needing to pee. Will try it tomorrow AM and then try putting him back to bed for (hopefully) 2 hours. We'll see. Not holding my breath.

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  5. I think it's a symptom of my sleep deprivation that it took me a minute or so to spot the typo. Damn funny though.

    We gave up on the sleep without rocking experiment & have accepted the partial co-sleeping - but last night was a baby awake midnight party. I decided she might be hot, so took her out of her sleeping bag which was a bad idea as she then hopped out of our bed and sped off,.. In otherwords, I feel your pain re: crazy non-sleeping babies.

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  6. Anonymous2:37 PM

    Don't look now... but the comments in the blog have now devolved to your favorite topic: how you're destroying wimmin by hiring people to clean!

    So remember: After you do your duty to the feminist sisterhood by working 80 hour weeks shattering glass ceilings and reaching the top levels you can reach, because anything less would be a disservice to the women who are counting on you, you'll need to go home and take care of your own house chores. Because having someone else do them is also a disservice to the sisterhood. Apparently the only good feminist is one who never sleeps, doesn't have kids, and has no free time (certainly not for blogging!)

    I'm not sure if you're allowed to have a househusband so long as he's male. Or a house cleaner so long as he's male. Or allowed to live in squalor. That hasn't been addressed yet. I'm guessing that there's a double-standard there.

    *sigh* No wonder kids today don't want to admit to being feminists. It sounds like a really horrible way to live.

    I'd like some free-time please! And to not feel guilty about striving for financial independence!

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  7. Anonymous2:38 PM

    Don't look now... but the comments in the blog have now devolved to your favorite topic: how you're destroying wimmin by hiring people to clean!

    So remember: After you do your duty to the feminist sisterhood by working 80 hour weeks shattering glass ceilings and reaching the top levels you can reach, because anything less would be a disservice to the women who are counting on you, you'll need to go home and take care of your own house chores. Because having someone else do them is also a disservice to the sisterhood. Apparently the only good feminist is one who never sleeps, doesn't have kids, and has no free time (certainly not for blogging!)

    I'm not sure if you're allowed to have a househusband so long as he's male. Or a house cleaner so long as he's male. Or allowed to live in squalor. That hasn't been addressed yet. I'm guessing that there's a double-standard there.

    *sigh* No wonder kids today don't want to admit to being feminists. It sounds like a really horrible way to live.

    I'd like some free-time please! And to not feel guilty about striving for financial independence! And true equality.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous2:38 PM

    oops... double post... sorry!

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  9. Hee hee, everyone- it took reading the book out loud for me to catch the typo, too. I was reading merrily along, and I said "Can you find these animals in the Australian outback... Goldfish" and burst out laughing.

    @nicoleandmaggie, exactly. Sometimes I just want to shake some of the more strident commenters and ask them whom, exactly, they think they are helping with their nonsense.

    But of course, now I'm going to have to go over and read the comments. Because my blood pressure is too low. (Actually, it is- I saw the doctor for my cold/sinus infection/whatever this week and was told that my blood pressure was too low.)

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  10. LOVE the cute kids stories!! And those canapes are brilliant (for kids at least).

    I also find the sleep issues to be so much easier for ME to deal with with the second child. But let's not discount that it's partially because we had such difficult sleepers the first time. I've heard many people who had rough sleepers for the second or later child say that they were really thrown for a loop.

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