And the winner is ...

Round One of The Great Blankie Battle ended at 11:45 last night, and I think the parents have been declared the victors, but it was a decision on points, and a close call.

Let me back up a bit to put this in perspective. Liza has a blanket that she sleeps with, and until recently that was all she did - sleep with it. It never left her crib, unless we were swapping it with the identical one we bought so we could wash it. But several weeks ago Liza decided that the blanket was coming with her to breakfast, where we had to physically wrestle it away from her so that she could eat without mashing yogurt into the blanket. Have you ever tried to get a blanket away from a toddler? I think they somehow grow extra hands with super strength, because it's much more of a battle than you'd think, and just when you think you've got it, the toddler digs in again. It's like wrestling an octopus, only less wet.

Right before we went to Cape May, Liza decided that it was necessary to bring the blankie downstairs after naps, too, and she started dragging it around the house. Actually, she started awkwardly carrying it, holding as much of it as she could in both hands, usually in front of her face, so that if she didn't trip or slip on the parts dragging on the floor, she invariably ran into something because she couldn't see where she was going.

This got worse at the beach, where Liza pretty much had to have the blanket in sight at all times when we were at the house, and we had to wrestle it away from her when we went to the beach. I have no problem with her being that attached to her blankie - heck, I'm not the one to throw the first stone there, as my blankie went with me to college, and didn't get fully retired from service until I got married, for god's sake. But her method of carrying the blanket was problematic, and it seemed like an easy problem to fix.

So Monday morning before her preschool class started, I cut blankie in half and hemmed the raw edges. Voila! Two identical mini-blankies, henceforth known as Blankie 2.0. Off we went to preschool, Blankie 2.0 in tow, and Liza didn't seem to notice the difference. No problems at naptime or bedtime the first day, and Liza barely tripped on the now-manageably-sized blanket. In retrospect, this probably wasn't the best time to do the Blankie 2.0 upgrade - she's been sick, and she's had a lot of stress the last few days, and she hasn't fully adjusted to being home yet. But her blankie was good and fragrant after a week at the beach, and I figured if I cut it now, she'd be less likely to reject it because it smelled right. Stupid Mommy.

Yesterday I think she finally caught on that something strange was going on with Blankie 2.0. When I put her down for her nap, she was exhausted and ready to sleep. I heard her talking to her animals for a while, whine for a while, and then she started giggling. That usually indicates that she is throwing all the stuffed animals out of her crib, which indeed she was.

Then the shrieking started. And went on ... and on ... and on. Not crying, not whining, not even "I just hurt myself come quick" screaming, but shrieking that I swear melted some of the finish off of her crib. I went to check on her to make sure the four horsemen of the apocalypse weren't camped out in her bedroom or anything, and I found that she had thrown Blankie 2.0 out of the crib and couldn't reach it. Oh, the horror! I got Blankie 2.0 and tried to rock Liza back to sleep. She spent five minutes crying with her eyes closed, flailing away at Blankie 2.0, then grabbing it and trying to snuggle with it, then flailing away again. I thought she might be having a night terror, even though she's a little young for that, and after a few minutes she settled down and went to sleep.

When Jason tried to put her to bed last night, all hell broke loose. She repeated the "Blankie 2.0 throwing and shrieking" routine several times, while Jason kept trying to settle her down again. She would cuddle up to it, just about drift off, and then startle awake, stand up and throw Blankie 2.0 out of the crib, then stand there crying hysterically and trying to reach it. After a while, I took over, rocking Liza for more than an hour while she almost dropped off, then struggled back to consciousness long enough to pitch Blankie 2.0 off my lap, then shrieked until I handed it back to her. I tried putting her in her crib and settling her there, which just ended up with her getting up to stagger around the crib like a drunkard in order to pitch Blankie 2.0 over the side. I swear, one time she got up, staggered in a few directions, pushed the button to turn her mobile back on, and collapsed face-first onto the mattress, apparently unconscious for about five seconds, at which point she tried to stuff Blankie 2.0 through the bars of the crib. I checked her diaper, checked her for fever, and changed her into different pajamas. No luck.

By 9 pm she wasn't sleepy anymore, so I brought her downstairs and she played while Jason and I watched some tv. She started acting sleepy again, so Jason took her upstairs around 10 to try again.

This time she upped the ante, refusing to sit on Jason's lap, bucking and writhing like someone having a fit if Blankie 2.0 touched her, or wasn't touching her. We ended up putting her in the middle of the carpet in her room and letting her flail for 10 minutes, hoping she'd exhaust herself or get over the tantrum on her own. We tried hugging her tightly and talking to her the way that Dr. Karp suggests in The Happiest Toddler on the Block, which I think might have worked if we had tried it sooner, but she was too far gone for that. We even broke down and tried giving her the uncut spare blankie, thinking that if she had what she wanted she'd be happy and fall asleep - she wouldn't even touch it. She had obviously gotten so caught up in the tantrum that she couldn't even remember what she was so outraged about.

I finally got her to calm down by holding her in my arms and jumping up and down so that we bounced really hard ... I don't know if it was the bouncing, or if the tantrum had just run its course, but she quieted down right away, and as long as I kept bouncing, she was happy to cuddle Blankie 2.0. I took her for a walk around the block while Jason got ready for bed and slept in the guest room, the only place in the house where you can't really hear Liza when she screams. I snuggled with her downstairs and we watched the most boring Baby Einstein video I could find in our collection, and she was asleep by the end of it. It was 11:45 by the time I got her into her crib.

I know what you're thinking. "When you figured out that Blankie 2.0 was the problem, why on earth didn't you just give her the uncut blanket and declare this a failed experiment?" Lots of reasons, some good, some bad.

She really seemed like she was going to give in, at least for the first hour or so. Jason actually got her to sleep a couple times, but never deeply enough to make the transfer to the crib without waking her. After the first hour, I think it stopped being about Blankie 2.0, and started to be her just being mad for some reason she had forgotten, and I'm not sure the original blanket would have fixed that. The original blanket wasn't really a good option, anyway, since it just meant we'd be back to the tripping during the daytime, and we'd only have the one blanket so washing would be an issue. I haven't been a hard ass about many things with Liza, but on this one I was prepared to draw a line that I will not cross.

Things seem to be better today - she woke up at her normal time, and she's taking a nap right now. Putting her down for the nap was no problem - she snuggled right up to Blankie 2.0 with no questions asked. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come. Otherwise, it could be a long couple of nights until she adjusts to the new blanket.