A Tale of Two Mamas
Trying to keep someone IN timeout
Archive for January, 2006
January 18, 2006 at 7:44 pm · Filed under Rants
I’ve been lucky the past few days at work–I’ve been able to leave shortly after 5:00 pm. However, tonight must have been payback for easy days at work.
I pull into the driveway, and notice that Graem is asleep in Shawna’s car. It’s a much-needed nap (which are far and few between these days), so I figure I might as well go inside and actually be able to use the bathroom before starting the post-work routine.
When I get in the door, Shawna insists on showing me the “gifts” that Peanut has left me in the basement: since the litterbox was at full capacity, he decided to gather kitty litter crumbs from outside the box and leave a steaming mound on top of them. Shawna and I go back upstairs to negotiate cooking dinner and poop duty, when Bailey starts gagging and heaving under the table. Dog vomit is added to the negotiation list.
I will save the gory details of catbox duty, but I find that we’re out of bleach, which I use to rinse out the box (not sure why, seems like a good idea but a waste of time). The bleach is in the back of Shawna’s car–yes, the same car which Grammy is so peacefully sleeping in. I debate with myself quickly on whether to abandon catbox duty to let her sleep–but then realize if I don’t finish it now, it will never get done and we will be blessed with landmines throughout the house, primarily in the bathtub. So I go ahead and risk the consequence of waking up Graem–which is of course inevitable.
After grabbing the bleach and washing my hands for the 15th time, I go back to shut off the car and bring Grammy-No-Nap into the house, along with another box of diapers to add to our stockpile. Grammy’s a piece of work and cries in her high chair, in spite of the cheerios I’ve offered as consolation. I HAVE to finish the catbox while Shawna works on dinner. It never fails–the second I finish refilling the catbox, both Peanut and Murphy have to use the facility.
Back to Bailey. Obviously feeling better after puking on the kitchen floor, she finds the two baby carrots that Graem had flung on the floor, and chews them to bits on the carpet. One more thing to do after feeding Grammy. Dinner’s almost done, but Grammy’s in a needy mood and needs to be held constantly. I pass her off to Shawna, not without some tears, so I can finish up the chutney for dinner and plate everything.
It’s understood that tonight’s a dinner on the couch, given Grammy’s intolerance for the high chair. Grammy sits next to me so she can have a second dinner of some bites of curry and rice. This keeps her quiet and still for a little while, and shortly she moves to mooch off of Shawna. I’m in the midst of trying to finish my dinner when all of a sudden Graem jerks and throws her head directly into my bowl. I guess it’s bath night! Graem now has chicken shahi korma and two kinds of chutney and rice grains in her hair. Luckily it matches her sweater. At least bath time is a break to put away dishes….
January 18, 2006 at 7:15 pm · Filed under Milestones, Uncategorized
Not sure if we should be proud of this one…. Graem will surely be appalled at us in her preteen years.
January 8, 2006 at 7:20 pm · Filed under Milestones
Grammy learned to say “Uh oh!” today. We were at the Cat’s Pajamas playing with their train set while Mama shopped for a snuggly to help her sleep. Graem dropped one of the trains and I said, Uh oh! and she started to say Uhh…OH! The entire car ride home she tried out her new words and said “Uh uh ooohh!”
January 8, 2006 at 7:12 pm · Filed under Milestones, Uncategorized
It’s officially Day 5 of the new bedtime routine, and there was only 20 minutes of crying! In fact, Graem is asleep right now, at 8:30 PM, in her crib! It wasn’t without a few bumps:
Day 2 was rough. We put her in the crib at around 8:00 PM, and agreed that we would check in on her every 10 minutes. Shawna put her to bed, so I was up for the first round. I went in to find her standing up and holding onto the rails screaming. I went over to pat her back down, and noticed that she was wet and smelled funny. I brought her out to the living room where, in the light, Shawna noticed that she had thrown up and gotten it all over her pajamas. I proceeded to get her cleaned up while Shawna tackled the crib. When Shawna got into the room and turned on the light, she saw that Graem had not only thrown up in the crib and all her blankets, but over the rail and onto a pile of stuffed animals and the floor. I was really upset that Graem was so distraught, and not sure this whole idea was going to work. So that night we decided that since she had no bedding anyway, we’d take a break.
Day 3: A new strategy. Realizing that the nursery and the crib are uncomfortable for Grammy, I decided that rather than checking in on her every 10 minutes, I’d stay in the room so she could see me, but I wouldn’t interact with her. It took about an hour and a half of crying on Friday night before she stopped crying and fell asleep. I got up a couple of times to try to pat her down, but she wouldn’t stay down and kept trying to climb out of the crib. Just holding her and patting her back over the rail really seemed to calm her down. I put Murphy in the crib for a little while, and that seemed to distract her from crying. It’s so hard when I can feel her little heart pounding because she’s so worked up. She stayed in the crib til around midnight, when she woke up and we brought her up to our room.
Day 4: Modifications to the new strategy. Something I realized I should have done the previous night is nurse her down in her room, so she starts to mellow out in her own room, and gets comfortable with the space. We also moved the rocking chair into her room so I could rock her while nursing, and so I’d actually have a place to sit while she cried. I sat with her for about 45 minutes, but couldn’t take it any longer after Bailey barked her head off and woke Grammy up after she had finally settled down. I did notice that she cried less frantically, and in shorter intervals. She also turned on the little fishbowl toy in her crib a couple of times, and that helped distract her a little. Shawna finished up the night checking on her. Grammy woke up a couple of times after she fell asleep, but Shawna was able to settle her back down. Graem stayed asleep til around 1:45 AM, so we thought we had made good progress. It was funny, even though Shawna and I went to sleep around 10 PM, we both kept waking up and saying to each other, I can’t believe she’s still asleep! I think we were both waiting for the moment when we could bring her back to bed and snuggle with her.
Day 5, tonight: We keep making additions to the strategy, tonight we added book reading in her room prior to the rest of the routine. At first, when Shawna picked out some books and brought Graem into the room, Graem started to cry in anticipation. Shawna just comforted her and started reading to her, and she was fine. Then I nursed her for about 15 minutes, and put her in the crib. She did cry a little bit, and I just hugged her as she was standing and patted her and told her that she’d be fine, and that Mama and I were just in the other room and would check on her. That was at 8:15 PM. Shawna and I agreed we’d check on her every 15 minutes, but by 8:30 PM, it was quiet! I really can’t believe it. She’s made some noise since then, but she’s mostly settled back down. We’ll see what time she wakes up later–I think it will be later and later each night.
January 4, 2006 at 6:47 pm · Filed under Milestones, Uncategorized
Tonight is our first night of really attempting to put Graem to bed in her crib in her own room. It’s tearing me apart! It’s so hard to hear her cry and know that I can fix it so easily. We just felt that it was finally time, and I’m trying to rationalize it to myself by saying that she isn’t sleeping well with us in bed because we wake her up when we go to bed or if we decide to stay up to read or use the computer. I am sad, I will miss her snuggling with me in bed.
Next entries »
