Day #1129 (Tue., Feb. 5, 2013) – Our “No Sleep” Child
Katie woke up in the middle of the night crying for her mommy. Of course this woke both of us up. As my wife was “spent” I said that I would take over and put Katie to bed. So begins the adventure…
At first Katie wanted to see the “man falling into the water”, which means the WipeOut Show. In particular she wanted to see this one segment where mechanical polar bears chase after them. That part was fine, but when she said that they scared her she wanted to see the baby polar bears. As there were none around I thought the “Care Bears” television show might do? She was having nothing to do with it… “Those bears aren’t white” she said.
I thought I would post a picture of the “squirrel’s nest” that I noticed last night. You can see a picture of it “circled in yellow” in the photo to the left.
After some coaxing I managed to get her into bed and we read a few stories. A kiss on the cheek, out goes the light, and that’s that, right? Nooooo…. Katie was mumbling a bit here and there and about 20 minutes later she started to cry for her mommy. When I went to her room the light was on and she was sitting on the bed with her blankets kicked off of her.
Next we ended up in the living room. A bit more of men falling off into the water, some “Dora The Explorer”, and daddy trying to feed his night owl daughter. Warm milk…she barely touched it. She told me that she wasn’t sure what she wanted to eat so I suggested cheerios. She nodded okay, so off I went. Back came the bowl of cheerios, raisins and some turkey bacon. No go…she just stared at it.
The next little drama was when she wanted a show about a “robot”. A “robot {something or other}” to be more exact. I had no idea. I asked for more details but she only got frustrated. I went through all the recent cartoons and no robots…couldn’t find anything even related. Eventually we settled on Barney…
I’ve got to get some food into this child…that’s my thought process. Since refined foods didn’t seem to do the trick how about berries? Katie hesitated (which is a good sign as it usually means she is thinking about it). When she nodded off to the fridge I went. Back with some blueberries… “No, I want blackberries”. Off I went. Good thing we had some. Equipped with a bowl of blackberries she sat back to continue watching Barney. She played with them at first but eventually one of them worked their way into her mouth. Slowly but surely, all but three of the berries disappeared. Once Barney had finished Katie said “I think I will go to bed”. OH HAPPY DAY!
Off to bed, another quick diaper change, “tucky tucky innie innie”, a quick “10 second tour” of an animal book, and lights out. 6:30am. As I write this it is 6:42am and all’s quiet… Good night daddy…
At noon today I did some errand shopping. My wife wanted me to pick up some Valentine’s Day plastic gift bags and ribbon at the Dollar Store.
Katie didn’t have a nap today so the anticipation was that she would go to bed early. That was our anticipation, not hers. I went to bed early in the new anticipation that she would be up late. Voila. At 10:45pm I work up to hear Katie running around. When food and cartoons and stories and such didn’t work we brought out our old reliable secret weapon…the drive.
We bundled up Katie in warm clothes with woolen socks on her feet and my wife made a lunch and some warm milk. A quick buckle into the car seat and we were off. I pointed out all the houses with the lights off and people sleeping but Katie only replied “But we’re not sleepy”. Right… Katie ate some cheese, but no turkey bacon or cracker. She didn’t even touch her warm milk.
Around 11:25pm the chatter and questions and fidgeting died down so I hurried home. I scooped her up and carried her to her room. She was too tired to even put up much of a struggle. In fact, she seemed eager to get into bed. A quick diaper change, a tuck under the blankets and Katie was done. 11:30pm…mission accomplished.
WHAT I LEARNED TODAY
——————————
1) I had to drive Katie around the neighborhood tonight “to take the edge off” so that she would fall asleep this evening.