Cutting it Close

I actually thought about giving up on the NaBloPoMo thing tonight because I am seriously tired. Like the kind of tired where you feel wasted. I really don't sleep enough as it is, and the sleep I do get depends entirely on how well Charlotte is sleeping. Wow, that last sentence is like the most obvious thing a parent has ever said.

See, I haven't said anything about this before because even though I don't believe in "jinxing" things, this was too good to risk losing: Charlotte has been sleeping like a CHAMPION, lately. Like...a sleeping Olympian. She usually goes to bed and down for naps with a couple stories, a song or two, and a goodnight kiss, accompanied by a "See you in the morning," which she says to her stuffed animals when she pretends to put them to sleep. Yeah, it's cute.

If she wakes up in the middle of the night, I can usually get her back down with some binkies, a quick cuddle, and occasionally, another song. But, even then, she's been known to interrupt me (or Chris, but usually me) mid-song, point to her crib, and say "Night-night."

So it was a rude awakening (literally) when she woke up an hour and a half after I had finally fallen asleep and responded to every attempt to put her back down with, "Downstairs? Mommy's bed?" and subsequent wailing when those requests were denied. She did eventually come to bed with me so she could sit up, kick me in the face, and talk to me about her binkies. Chris came home to find us hanging out in bed. Me, half asleep and Charlotte, inexplicably wired. He was able to get her down, but I was on my own the next three times. There was Orajel application, a diaper change, a Tylenol dosage, more repetition of the same Beatles song than should be humanly possible, and a lot of sitting in my rocking chair alternately dozing and thinking, "What the hell am I going to do now?"

On top of all this, she wouldn't nap today. I don't know why she is trying to destroy me, but she is succeeding. Today the combination of sleep-deprivation and the fact that she once again, requested I leave the area in which she and her daddy were playing, resulted in me huddled in a corner of the kitchen, quietly crying.

I'm a pro, I am.

Bad Baby: The Sequel!

Since I'm fresh off the discipline post, I thought I'd give you all an inside look at what kind of brattiness we are up against these days.

Let me preface this by saying that unless Chris sees any of this behavior with his own eyes, he is convinced I'm lying. Or exaggerating. Or mistaken. And, even when he does witness a transgression, he never thinks she means it, never sees any malice. This isn't due to "not MY child" syndrome; he just think Charlotte's too young to be testing her limits. Let's all tell him how wrong he is, shall we?

When our niece, Athena, was three, we were watching her and her sisters at our house. Chris had left the three of them in the other room for a minute to come tell me something when we heard the one-year-old baby start wailing. We ran in there to find her holding her face and immediately looked at Athena. As she began her story about how the baby "fell and hit her face on the wall. Yeah, that's it! The wall!", our eldest niece, Mikala, was pretty much like, "Yeah, I'm gonna have to stop you right there, seeing as you SLAPPED her."

And Chris couldn't believe it. He didn't want to believe it. It was like telling a kid that Santa isn't real or that their favorite basketball star is a rapist (What? That's totally appropriate for kids.) He was crushed. "But, she's so little! She can lie already?" I hated to have to tell him that kids are pretty much BORN lying.

So, Chris thinks it's a coincidence, and not precociousness when Charlotte waits to make sure I'm looking before doing something I've just told her not to do. Like when I've pulled a knick-knack out of her hand at my grandma's house, said "Don't touch", and then she waits a few minutes, walks over to the forbidden item, pauses to make sure I'm looking, SMILES, and then reaches for it. I tell Chris about it, prefacing the story with, "Man, Charlotte is such a butt...", and he cries "No, no! Surely not. She's not that advanced." Um, advanced enough to be a butt. Looking...shifty

She's also a showoff. Yesterday, we were visiting my grandma and her house guest. Charlotte threw her sippy cup, and, as always, I asked her to pick it up. Normally, she will comply with little to no coaxing, but now that there was a new person watching, she decided to draw the process out as long as possible. She was like, "Maaaaybe I don't wanna pick it up. How about I just push it with my foot? Maybe I'll just lie here on the ground for a minute first." It was so unexpected and so hilarious, it was hard not to laugh through my stern admonitions. In the end, I "helped" her pick it up by holding her directly over it. Not a total win, but she's one, you know? And, at least she picked it up.

I joke about her being a brat, but really I know she's just a normal toddler, seeing what she can get away with. And she's also very sweet. She gives me kisses, sometimes when I request them, and some are impromptu. She seems to be aware of the power of her kisses. She knows how much I love them, which, I can only assume, is why she has hit me in the face, only to quickly try and distract me with a kiss before I have a chance to admonish her. It only kind of works. See? Sweet!

She also shares, though, usually only when she wants to and on her terms. Though, she did steal a muffin from a two-year-old at the coffee shop last week, so that sort of negates any sharing she's done recently.

There are days (like today) where she is pushing my buttons all day: screaming at me in the fabric store because I'm carrying her and not letting her pull all the spools of ribbon off the shelves, pushing my hand away when I try to help her color, and whining for the entire car ride home. Those days, I put her to bed, breathe a huge sigh of relief, and pour myself a glass of wine. Okay, so I do that every night, but some days I do it with more zeal than others.

Then sometimes (tonight) she'll wake up screaming a few hours after bedtime, and when I pick her up to comfort her, she opens her heavy eyes, pulls the binky out of her mouth, smiles, and softly says, "Hi".

And, I seriously forget about all the times she bugged the hell out of me throughout the day. I suppose that's her diabolical plan.

She's GOOD, that one.
And here she is playing with chalk. Why? Because it's cute. And holy crap, I have a TODDLER.

Bad Baby!

For Charlotte’s first Halloween, my mom is going to turn her into a devil. Growing up, my mom always made costumes for my sister and me, and she graciously offered to do the same for Charlotte. Why a devil? Well, it’s a pretty typical costume for kids. In fact, my little sister was one for her second Halloween (She was, like, weeks old for her first Halloween). There is a rather famous picture in our family of Allison all bedeviled, with a mouth full of candy, looking at me like, “Dude! Why didn’t you tell me how awesome this is? We get to do this EVERY year?"

But honestly, we didn’t randomly pick a standard baby costume for our daughter. We picked a devil because it is so appropriate. Oh, relax. I don’t actually think my daughter is the anti-Christ or a spawn of Satan. Although…

All I’m saying is we picked the costume because our child is such a pain in the ass. If you’re offended by my choice of words, you have not met my daughter. To know Charlotte is to adore her, but it is also to wonder aloud why she’s SO BAD. In some ways she is very much like her mother. I, too, am a pain in the ass. Just ask my husband. I’m restless, impatient, don’t sleep well, and I’m spoiled. Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte, and, oh yes, Charlotte. We are willful creatures who usually end up getting our way with Chris. She does it with tears, and I do it with…well, let’s just say I keep him happy. I would pity my husband, but he actually seems rather satisfied with submitting to the batting eyelashes of his wife and daughter.

Like many first-time parents, Chris and I spent Charlotte’s first day on this planet marveling at what a good, quiet baby she was. She slept most of the day, and when she was awake, she just stared deep into our eyes. We thought we had it made. Of course, that lasted all of twelve hours. Soon she began screaming every time we changed her diaper, screaming whenever she wasn’t attached to my cracked and bleeding nipples, and screaming because, well, screaming is fun, right?

After a few days in the hospital, we decided to take her home despite all the screaming. Over the next couple of months we were treated to even more screaming: in the car, when anyone besides Chris or me held her, and of course every night at six until midnight during her colicky phase. Soon, she and I would come to blows over breastfeeding, but I’ve already covered that here. So, I will only say this: I have read about a breastfeeding mother and her child as being referred to as a “nursing couple”. Well, if Charlotte and I are a couple, we’re the Odd Couple. We’re Sid and Nancy. We’re star-crossed.

I think part of the reason Charlotte is so difficult is because, in some ways, she’s so independent. At six months she would rather drink from a cup than be cuddled and fed a bottle. She has decided that she will eat her vegetables and rice cereal, but only if she can hold the spoon. She is also eager to move and has been scooting across the floor since she was three-months old. If you pull her to a sitting position, she’ll do you one better and pull herself to a standing one. Now that she is a bit older and can do so many more things on her own, she is a much happier baby. In fact, most of the time now, she is more likely to be found smiling, laughing, or growling like a monster than screaming, which has been nothing short of my miraculous rescue from the brink of insanity.

In a way, I am proud of her independence. I beam when she grabs her sippy cup and clumsily tilts it to her face. I am happy to clean up the extra mess she makes while eating because I want to encourage the autonomy she shows by feeding herself, quite handily, I might add. But, like everything else, my feelings on this are complicated. When I look into the future, I see a bright, capable girl. One who takes initiative and conquers obstacles. I want this for my child, but I also want her to need me. I suppose this is the Achilles heel of all mothers. Our job is to create self-reliant and functional adults. So, we should delight in anything our children can do without our help. It means we’re doing something right. But, so much of our identity is wrapped up in being caregivers for our children. Who are we if we aren’t boo-boo fixers, arms to sleep in, a source of nourishment or comfort?

Obviously, I am getting ahead of myself. Charlotte is a baby, and needs me for almost everything. In fact, with her current refusal of the bottle, I can scarcely leave her for a couple of hours without her screaming bloody murder. There’s also her need to be close to us at all times. She would have me hold her in my arms the entire time she sleeps if she could. Instead she settles for sleeping in bed with us. It’s the only way she’ll sleep through the night, and even though ultimately I’d like her to sleep in her own bed, I am happy to be her teddy bear for the moment. And I adore watching her smile when she wakes up and sees she’s not alone. I’m just trying to prepare myself for the inevitable heartache of watching her learn to do more and more things without my help and eventually flat out refusing my assistance or even presence. But, I guess the best thing to do is to enjoy every minute of her neediness now, while still encouraging her independence. Which reminds me, it’s time to go hand her a spoon and watch her shove some squash into her mouth. Or her eye. She doesn’t care. As long as she’s doing it herself.