My daughter

Liza had a hard day today, what with having to gleefully watch my podiatrist relieve me of gallons of blood through the bottom of my right foot, and having to share her favorite playground with 75 other 4-year-olds from her school, and having to watch Handy Manny for an hour while I toiled with shovel and hoe and 4,000 bags of sand in our swampy new flower garden.  My goodness, her life is tough.

So it wasn't really a surprise that she wouldn't go to sleep right away tonight, wanting to be rocked, and then wanting to get out of her room altogether.  I told her she could stay up and ruin her mood for tomorrow if she wanted, but I had work today (thank you, mermaid costume purchaser!).  She played quietly in her room for almost an hour, and the only things I heard from her involved needing ice cubes for the water glass by her bed.

At 9:15 she called out and asked me to help her cover up with more silkies.  I go in to see what's going on, and she insisted it was necessary to sleep on her bed ...

 - sideways

 - on top of her pillow, with a smaller pillow under her head, so she's actually letting all the blood drain slowly into her brain

 - while wearing her polarfleece bathrobe

 - and not using any sheets or quilts

 - but instead using nine 3' square silkies piled on top of each other as blankets.

I drew the line at cuddling with the 20-pound beanbag chair full of stuffed animals, though, which I confiscated on my way out the door.

She's still in there, sideways, on her pillow, wearing a robe, covered only with silkies.  I figure she only sleeps through the night half the time anyway, so tonight's quirk isn't really going to hurt anyone, even if she wakes up all freaked out.  Plus, it will be fun to see what color her face will be in the morning.

awwwwww

Liza has been sick all this week, and she's willingly taken a nap every day (hurray for getting Lazy Mama work done!). And the naps have made it virtually impossible to get her to go to bed at a reasonable hour, so today I tried to keep her awake through her normal naptime.

Um, yeah, that worked well for me.
We almost made it, but the cold (and afghan, and warm lap-cat) was too much for her.

Of course, she woke up coughing and gagging on her own phlegm before I even managed to get the photo downloaded and this post started, so we could be in for another long night.

Damn, I miss naps

Liza is napping for the first time this week.

Thank you, Higher Power, for giving me 90 minutes of solitary splendor. It's a nice change from the kid's daily afternoon meltdown followed by giddiness followed by inability to listen to even the most basic directions. Apparently sleep is necessary for basic rules of public conduct to apply, things like, "Don't throw the seat cushions from the restaurant's patio chairs over the railing and into the gigantic river gorge it juts over." Yeah, that was a great dinner, let me tell you.

Anyhoo, I have a ton of stuff to catch up on, and with the ongoing lack of naps around here and some Lazy Mama projects that are increasingly time-constrained, it may be all quiet on the Mind Flush front for a few days. I'm (probably) not dead or institutionalized, just busy.

The pee fairy

For the last few weeks, Liza has been going to bed later and later each night, using a series of increasingly long and ridiculous stalling techniques that have Jason and I contemplating spanking, alcoholism, and/or child abandonment. I need water! I need to go potty! I need more snuggles! My leg is hanging out! I need to go potty! I need another book! I need another song! I need Mommy! I lost my bunny! I need to go potty! Yeah, and we need some time to watch old X-Files episodes and steal from the stash of candy you collected at the parade last week, so get the hell in bed.

Our usual routine is that Jason puts Liza to bed, doing all the singing and snuggling and stories, since by that time of day I'm not only tired, I'm tired of the kid, and I'm much more prone to lose it than he is. We kind of alternate who gets stuck going back in to settle her down, based on who is less likely to kill her in the next 15 minutes. The stalling and stalling and stalling was getting really annoying, and even Jason was having a tough time keeping his patience when we had to go in 6 times on Thursday night and she didn't get to sleep until 10pm.

Friday night Jason went out for drinks with a friend, and I was in charge of bedtime. Things go much differently when I'm in charge by myself, as I generally am a LOT more willing to listen to screaming than he is, and I have no problem being Evil Parent. I told Liza very clearly that I was going to do her whole bedtime routine, including books and songs and a story and snuggles and a trip to the potty and a glass of water, but when I left and shut the door, that was it. Period. I was not going back in there unless the house caught on fire or a wolverine snuck in through her open window (I think I left that part out of the actual lecture).

So I left, and she started screaming. I need water! I need to go potty! I need more snuggles! My leg is hanging out! I need to go potty! I need another book! I need another song! I need Mommy! I lost my bunny! I need to go potty! And I went downstairs and knitted.

After 5 minutes I went up and told her that I was still here, I loved her, but I was not going in, and she needed to go to sleep. I watched her go to the potty (again), rinsed out the potty, said goodnight and shut the door. This got me incoherent raging and kicking of walls, which settled into just kicking of walls, and she was asleep 15 minutes later. Score one for Evil Mommy!

Saturday night Jason was home, and I gave Liza the same lecture. Blah blah, not coming in, Daddy's not coming in either, go to sleep.

"Daddy will come and get me." (with a smirk)
"No he won't."
"Yes, he will."
"No, he won't, because if he tries to, I will sit on him until he gives up and stops trying to get to your room."
"You can't sit on Daddy!"
"If it means getting you to sleep earlier, yes I can."

Fifteen minutes of screaming, and she was asleep.

***

Last night, after five minutes of screaming, I stuck my head in Liza's room. She said she had to got to the potty, which is always her first stage of stalling, and despite the fact that she JUST WENT FIVE MINUTES BEFORE, she usually manages to actually go again, so it's not like we can ignore it if we ever want her to be potty trained at night.

"You're a big girl. You use the potty by yourself every day. Get out of bed, use the potty, wipe your butt, and get back in bed. We'll clean out the potty in the morning."

She was quiet after that, and Jason and I got to watch a movie. A whole movie. Including trailers. Hallelujah!

Jason checked on her before we went to bed, and she had done just what I told her, getting her diaper back on and even getting the sheets over her and everything. All he had to do was rinse out the potty and we were good to go. Score!

When Jason called this morning, I told him that Liza's first concern when she woke up was that we had to clean out her potty. I told her that Daddy had done it in the middle of the night.
"You should have told her the Pee Fairy came and took it away." Ha, ha, very funny.

Tonight we had no problem getting her to bed - as Jason was leaving the room, she said she had to pee, so he told her to go and get back in bed by herself. He went in a few minutes ago, and she was curled up under her covers, bunny under her arm, potty full of pee. He carried out the potty and asked me, "Should the Pee Fairy leave a quarter in her potty?"

No, I don't think so, but thanks for the disturbing mental image of a urine-soaked sprite sneaking into my house every evening.

reboot, schmeeboot

Friday night: asleep by 11:30pm, after us having to go in there three times. No star for her.
Saturday night: asleep by 10:30, I don't honestly remember if we had to go in.
Sunday night: asleep by 9:30, and we didn't have to go in.

Now if we could just convince her to let us turn the damn light off, we'd be set.

Hard reboot

As soon as I blog about my kid's routine, it goes and changes ...


Yesterday I woke Liza earlier than her recent time (around 8, I guess), and after running errands all morning she fell asleep in the car when we were 5 minutes from home . She wouldn't take a nap after that, so I got to deal with Cranky the Napless Wonder Child for the rest of the afternoon.

One of the morning's errands took us to Bed Bath and Beyond Awful, where I ended up buying a set of glow-in-the-dark stars for Liza's ceiling. We stuck one up last night, and I showed her how she could only see it when the lights were out ... not so effective when the sun came out at 8pm after a week of rain and haze, but she was impressed. I told her that if she got to sleep without me having to come in to sing to her again, she'd get another star for the ceiling tomorrow. And to try to prevent the whole "pull every book off the shelf and make an unstable landslide on the floor that she insists I help her pick up before she goes to sleep" routine, I packed her much-loved new Disney Princess backpack with a dozen of her favorite books and stuck it in bed with her. The result?

8:30 pm Thursday

Oh, thank god. We managed to watch TWO WHOLE EPISODES of Battlestar Galactica without the banging, thumping, whining, and crying going on overhead, she woke up at 7:30 this morning, and she went down for a nap by 1:30 this afternoon. We're having company over tonight, so I don't know how bedtime will go, but there's hope for our continued sanity after all.

I'm so proud that I didn't lose it

The last few days, putting the kid to sleep during her "normal" naptime has just been the beginning of a two-hour-long whine&play session in her room followed by conking out on the couch around 5pm. So yesterday I decided I was going to just wait until she looked like she was tired to even suggest the whole nap thing.

Around 2pm we were playing in my room, rolling around on the bed and doing gymnastics and tickling. She suddenly grabbed Jason's pillow and started trying to burrow her face into it, saying, "Liza sleep here."
"Okay, do you want some covers?"
"Yeah, want covers. Where posse?"
"They're in your room. I'll go get them for you."
I leave the room, practically giddy with the thought of actually having an hour or two to work on something during the afternoon. I return with the posse, and she's under the covers in our bed, eyes slitted open, slurring her words.
"Thank you, mama. Liza sleep here. Night night."
Giving a mental "WOOHOO!!!" I kiss her goodnight and head for the door. Before I can get there, Liza pops out of bed and says "All done! Let's go outside!"

Gaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.

She finally took her nap at 4:30, after getting really sleepy on the couch and depositing about 1/2 gallon of pee between the sofa cushions without bothering to tell me until the video was over.

I got her to sleep last night by 10:30.

Mantra of the week: Must ... not ... open ... bourbon ... before ... 4pm ...