turtle's blog

I'm sitting down here in the living room, listening to the Wee Papa try to get T down for bedtime. She happily does the entire bedtime routine*- put on pajamas! yay! Brush teeth! Daddy "make sure" brush teeth! Hug Monster! (hug monster is a game we play, the grown-ups- whoever is around- sit on the floor in the hallway and the hug monster {T} comes at us and 'attacks' with a hug, sometimes it's a running hug monster, sometimes crawling, sometimes yoga-doing hug monster, sometimes spinning, sometimes hopping, or dancing or whatever weird little thing her mind comes up with. It's everyone's favorite part of bedtime). But for whatever reason tonight she absolutely does NOT want to do the next part with the Wee Papa- reading books and going sleepy-bye and is screaming, "MAMI!!!!! MAAAAMMMMIIIIIIIII!!!!" Wailing. Gnashing of teeth muchly & hugely.

Our house is too small. I need a basement where I can go, that is sound-proof. It takes every ounce of willpower not to go up there. But the Wee Papa does about 75% of the sleepy-bye times these days and so for me to go up there is counter-productive in the end. But it's hard for me to tune her out. I try putting headphones on but I can still hear her. Maybe I need those super-expensive noise-canceling headphones (as if). The problem is that I know psychically even that she's crying for me. Or just crying cos she is PISSED OFF that she doesn't want to go to bed, with the Wee Papa or with me. And so just the KNOWING is hard for me. I should go see a movie or go out for a drink or something. Except, I don't wanna! I'm a homebody at heart and would rather be here. I just want the here to have an absence of a two-and-a-half year old screaming at the top of her amazingly strong lungs.

In general, I wish going to sleep wasn't so hard for T. But I think she's like me, she just takes a long time to settle; I read, I play some word games, do a crossword, turn out the light, think about things, try at least five different positions, perhaps review some of the top 10 most embarrassing moments of my life, toss a bit more, and then eventually fall asleep. Not like the Wee Papa who lays down, might read for a bit, closes his eyes, and... sleeps. Never learned that skill, did I. At times I fear that I have somehow 'taught' T to take a long time to go to sleep, because she used to nurse to sleep and then after that ended, she feel asleep rocking in my arms. But is it really a thing you can learn? To go to sleep fast? I suppose people who believe in sleep training might say that it is... But then again, my parents used to put me in my crib and leave me and I know from their stories that I would sing to myself, babble (before I could talk) or talk or whatever for a long time before I went to sleep. Which are all the things that T does. So maybe it's just like temperment or something, not what you learn, but just how you ARE?

And how can I wish my daughter to be different from how she IS, who she IS, at a fundamental level? I mean, yes, sometimes I wish she would not behave a certain way, but that is mostly about learning at this point, and about seeing what the limits are, if the limit is always the same (is putting one's feet on the table *always* a bad thing?)? Stuff like that. But I wouldn't really want to change her personality, her chattiness, her shyness, her sense of humor, her stubbornness, her sweetness, her wholehearted loving nature... so maybe her taking a long time to sleep is like that and I need to work on accepting that it may never be easy. At some point she'll be old enough to decide to stay up reading (like I decided to and honestly, I don't think my mother has ever been more angry with me than when she discovered me reading waaaaaaaaay past my bedtime) until she is ready to let go.

Okay, all is quiet, more or less, upstairs. I can creep up and watch some "TV" on my computer now. Thanks for letting me get my stress out in words, mamas.

*T does not ++always++ do all of the bedtime routine happily. Sometimes it's a struggle from start to finish. Those nights make me question my sanity, our decision to have a child, my worth as a mother and a parenting partner, and whether I shouldn't just move to the outback of Australia. But most days the routine, up until sleepy-bye, is quite easy, especially if we review it beforehand.

T is more or less being brought up bilingual (English/Spanish). I say more or less because I pretty much suck at remembering to talk to her in Spanish. But I do it some which is better than nothing. And her daycare is bilingual, although at this young (toddler) age it's mostly all Spanish. She knows her numbers 1-10 in Spanish now. Well, kinda. She says (transliterating, here),

"Uno, Doh, Chre, Quaattro, Cinco, ... OCHO! Neve, Dez"

I'm not sure what happened to seis y siete but they have no place in T's number world, at least in Spanish (six and seven exist just fine). No matter what we do we can't get her to do the seis y siete part. She'll repeat them if we say them in isolation. But not as part of the series. I think she just gets excited to get to ocho. She's always quite gleeful when she says ocho-- it's louder and more emphatic than any of the other numbers. Perhaps it's her favorite. Kind of like I think yellow might be her favorite color- it's always said with a lot of joy and she likes pointing it out whenever she sees it. All of which is kinda funny cos it my synesthesia-ish brain, yellow and eight are linked, eight's color is yellow (but not really that yellow's number is is eight. Some numbers have colors but colors don't have numbers; go figure).

She's also pointing out numbers where ever she sees them. Which always surprises me. I guess I expect her to "know" the numbers when they are where she's learned them- books, puzzles, etc. But random numbers out in the world- wow. Although why that's surprising to me I don't know. Numbers are pretty much numbers, wherever they are. I think it's just that it's mind-boggling to watch her brain expanding, learning how to do things she simply could not do a few months ago. Definitely a joy of parenting.