twinkle

Liza isn't much for displays of affection ... she tolerates the kissing and the cuddling and seems to enjoy it, but she rarely wants more than we force on her, and she never initiates the contact with us. So while she'll hug us when we ask her to, she never comes up and hugs us spontaneously (unless you count her recent trick of crawling over to wherever I'm standing and forcing her head in between my calves ... she reminds me of one of those dogs that has to lean on you whenever you're around). This is okay, because I think having a constantly nuzzling child would annoy me after a while, but an occasional hug or kiss would be nice, thank you very much.

Recently, however, I've found a way to weasel some "sugar" out of her. She's been resisting going down at bedtime for the past few weeks, and when she does, a lot of nights Jason will go up and get her calmed down. Usually this involves getting her to lie down again (because she's hopping up and down in her crib while she whines) and then sitting by her crib, singing songs until she's ridiculously drowsy. I've started a variation of this routine at naptime - when I initially put her down to sleep I now sit by the crib and sing a few rounds of "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" until she looks drowsy.

While I sing, I stick my hand through the bars of the crib and lightly stroke her arm or hand, whatever is closer. It's sweet enough that as soon as I start stroking her arm, she quits fussing and looks at me with her eyes at half mast, and you can virtually see them cranking shut, one micrometer at a time. But what's even sweeter is that when I stop stroking her arm, she reaches out and grabs my finger and holds on ... sort of like those dogs who will convince you to pet them by coming up under wherever your arm happens to be in hopes that you'll scratch them out of reflex. It's the first time that she's shown any indication that she wants me to continue any sort of display of affection, and by god, I'll keep stroking until my arm falls off, if that's what she wants.