Cave People

Jon and I are officially cave people. It's not just that 98% of all communication in our house takes the form of grunts and gestures or we occasionally decorate with hand prints and food stuffs. No, we are "cavers" for a whole different reason.

Remember the whole 'we're getting rid of pacifiers' thing? Yeah... See, here's the thing. We did get rid of them. Since the Sunday after Thanksgiving, we had remained strong. Not a single "ba-see" had crossed Miss Maddie's lips, and whenever she asked for them, we reminded her that we had said "Bye-bye, paci", which seemed to work. She still cried before going to sleep now and then, but overall, we were pleased that going paci-free had gone so smoothly. Then, we made a rookie mistake.

We assumed, quite naively it appears, that going to bed in a strange place would prove no different than going to bed at home. So, when we packed up the car and headed to my parents' house for Christmas, we didn't take a single pacifier. Not one. Not even a teething pacifier, which isn't really a pacifier but may have worked in a pinch. "We" were idealistic fools.

By 3:30 a.m. on December 26th, we had realized the error of our ways. In fact, I'm pretty sure that six of the nine people in my parents' house had come to the conclusion that our ways just plain sucked. Being that all their children and their children's significant others had come home for the holidays, space at Casa de Webster was tight. Maddie, Jon, and I were all in the same room, and she was in the dreaded pack 'n' play, which is not an ideal situation. (Since day three in our home, the Madster has done better sleeping in her own room. I blame Jon's rumbling earthquake of a snoring problem.) At roughly 1 a.m., she woke up, and seeing us in the room, proceeded to stand in her bed saying "Mama, Mama, Mama" over and over until I took her out of her bed and into ours. However, as usual, she had no interest in sleeping in our bed. She just wanted to play, and with that many people in the house, there was no "cry it out" option and no place to go.

As time progressed and everyone grew increasingly tired and irritable, each attempt to calm and relax her made her angrier and angrier. Finally, Jon tried giving her some warm milk, and this seemed to work--until it was gone, at which point the real, hysterical screaming started. He suggested going out to try and find a pacifier, but I resisted. I was afraid it would set us back to square 1, and I was not prepared to give up ground so easily, but when she wasn't calm by 3 a.m. and we were starting to whisper-yell at each other, I changed my mind and (because Maddie refused to come to me at that point but then screamed when I left the room) ventured out in the absolutely freezing, snow-blowing night in search of pacifiers. It probably goes without saying that in Great Bend, KS, population 15,500, nothing was open at 3:30 a.m. the night after Christmas. (Even though the lights in both Wal-Mart and Dillion's were on, and I thought very mean, non-repeatable things about the people who stood near the doors and shook their heads at me as I trudged back to my car, in my pajamas, through the snow and wind.)

By the time I got back, she was asleep, and I crawled into bed for two more hours of sleep before being woken up at 6 a.m. From now on, we're keeping the newly dubbed "travel-pacifiers" in each car in hopes of avoiding more "Night After Christmases."

P. S. - For those of you who are wondering, we did purchase pacifiers the next day, and Saturday night went just fine. She then slept for almost two hours on the way home, took and hour and a half nap that afternoon (from which we had to wake her for fear that she wouldn't go to bed that night), went to bed at 7:15 p.m., and had to be woken up at 7:15 a.m. this morning. If only the same could be said of her parents.

Merry Christmas to all...

and to all a Good Night!

Bubble Bath = FAIL

Huge, giant, colassal FAIL. Apparently, when you've been taking bubble-less baths your entire life, adding bubbles is terrifying.

It was so sad, too because Jon was so excited about this "first" bubble bath. He wanted to run her bath, he wanted to put the bubbles in, he wanted to be the one to put her in. She wanted nothing to do with it. What follows is a small photographic/videographic record of this failure of a first:

And This Is Why...

No one will feel sorry for me. I get to see things like this almost every day.

Yeah, we're pretty lucky.

I Love Her, but...

In which I rant, whine, and generally complain and no one feels sorry for me.

I love my daughter. I love her to pieces. Can't imagine my life without her, but as every parent knows, there are some things about parenthood I could do without (unless you're one of those crazy, over-involved parents who actually likes changing diapers, wiping snot, and cleaning cheerios out of every crevice in your house, in which case, I have one word for you: Nut Job). Herein, in the rant for which none of you will feel sympathy, I list some of the things I will not miss about early toddlerhood:

1. I will be sooooo glad when the first finger on my right hand no longer smells permanently of Desitin. Seriously...

2. I will be forever grateful when my bathroom no longer looks like this on a regular basis:

3. I'll be super-excited when I can walk into my kid's bedroom and not be met by a wall of diaper-smell. It doesn't seem to matter how often we clean/empty the trashcan. The smell abides.

4. I will not miss the daily force-brushing of teeth that only results in tears, screaming, and biting:

5. I will gladly bid a not-so-fond farewell to the nightly pajama wrangling that usually ends in more screaming, along with some thrashing, kicking, and overall unhappiness.

As I said above, I know no one is going to feel sorry for me, but sometimes, you just need to unload.

A Night Without Pacifiers

We kept saying we were going to do it--after she turned one, after football season ('cause you know, she's going to have to sleep at her uncle's a lot, and well...), after the Thanksgiving holidays and all the traveling and strange bed sleeping that entailed. All that, and yet, somehow, when it was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and we had no more excuses, it still caught us a little by surprise. "She's still a baby!" we wanted to say. "She's not ready. Maybe after Christmas."

But NO. It was time. We were taking away the pacifiers. So, after her nap, I gathered up all the pacifiers in her room and held them out to her in a small pile in my hand. "Say bye-bye to your pacifiers," I said. "Say bye-bye, paci."

"Buh-buh, basee." (Which, ironically, is a word she only picked up last week.)

Then, while she watched, I put all of the pacifiers on the top shelf in her closet and closed the door. She continued to wave bye-bye to her "basees" for a little while, and she asked for them again while bouncing in her crib later that evening. (Yes, we let our kid jump on her bed. Don't judge. It makes her happy, and it's not like we were going to be keeping that little crib mattress forever anyway.) This was all preliminary, though. We all knew the real test was yet to come.

Fast-forward to 7 p.m. We'd brushed her teeth, put on her pajamas, read Good Night Moon (twice, I think), and she'd said good night to Daddy (meaning she said "Buh-buh" to him and waves all the way down the hallway). I put her in bed, told her I love her, and left, closing the door behind me. Then, we waited. At first, there was silence, but then the silence turned to whimpering. You could hear her (on the monitor) rummaging around in her crib, searching desperately for the pacifiers, any pacifier, so she can relax and go to sleep. Finally, the screaming started. Huge, loud, gulping sobs came roaring out of the monitor. We sat and stared at each other. After five minutes or so, I couldn't take it anymore, and I went in to rub her back, soothe her, etc.

This went on for about 30 minutes. I soothed, I left, she screamed, until finally, she cried herself to sleep. Strangely, she never once actually asked for a "basee." Perhaps she was too traumatized for words. It was heartbreaking, but we really felt like it was time to leave the pacifier behind. I've read that the older they get, the harder it gets to take them away, and at a certain point, you can screw up their teeth, and since Maddie sleeps a-lot, she technically had a pacifier in her mouth more than half the day. With this last point in mind, I insisted that we go to bed early, convinced that she would be up two or three times during the night.

Ahhhh, it's amazing what 9+ hours of sleep can do for you... I did hear her whine a couple times during the night, but she always went right back to sleep. What's more, her nap at daycare, sans "basee" went off without a hitch. She went to sleep on her own and slept her normal 2.5 hours. Last night, it was only six minutes of crying before she went to sleep, and I think that's because she was very, very sleepy. Of course, now that I've blog-bragged about what an easy-going kid we have, she'll probably take it to a whole new level tonight. Regardless, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for sweet, paci-free dreams.