I picked up a couple of DVDs for our family-friendly collection (this is a tiny subset of the regular collection). One is called Barnyard. It's an animated number about which I'd heard nothing. This is often how I shop. Anyway, enough about me, the movie's rated PG. The label explains the rating's for "some mild peril and rude humor." I read this aloud to Brandon.
B - Sounds like our house.
R - Mild Peril? Yeah, we got that.
B - No, rude humor.
R - True, we got it all.
Amelia, after much
beating training, has been going to sleep for naps and bedtime generally without complaint for, oh, I don't know, a year now?
Until Tuesday. Tuesday I put her in bed for her nap around noon. As is our custom. She's been doing a noon to three nap and an eight to eight overnight for some time. So, Tuesday she screamed for a good ten minutes (as opposed to a bad ten) before going to sleep. Tuesday night I went out for lady time to play bunco with the gals. (You have to play bunco with "gals.") When I got home Brandon reported Amelia had a scream-fest at bedtime to the degree he went in to comfort her. This is a super-rare event around here. This screaming continued through Thursday. Every sleep attempt was met with this reaction. When my child is in this kind of distress there is a large portion of my brain (heart?) which kind of clumps up and gets pissed off. Others suffer. Friday rolled around and we were all home and I decided to do an experiment: it was noon and Amelia had played, pooped, eaten - all the important stuff - so I asked her if she was tired. She said no. Okay, we did this for quite a while. When she wanted to interact, I told her that since it was naptime and she was supposed to be sleeping, I would not play with her. No, she could not have more to eat or drink, it was naptime. She persisted with the line that she was not tired. At 1:50 I said, here's the deal, you are going to sleep. We all went into her room and put her freshly diapered bum into bed. She said "no," but we said "yes." She hollered for a matter of seconds and slept until after five. This led to nine o'clock bedtime which was not protested at all. Since then she's napped from about one to four and gone to bed by nine. The screaming is over. This may not seem like a big deal but an hour is big in the land of the 1.75-year-old. Or more specifically, the land of the mama of the 1.75-year-old. Deep breath. Embrace the change. Vote for Obama.
