Emma has kinda been on a sleeping strike as of late, which is not like her. She usually sleeps for 13 hours at night and then takes AT LEAST a two hour nap during the day. We know, she is awesome. The past week has been a major struggle at bed time. But she usually falls asleep within an hour of us first trying. While Todd was at school last night I put the girls to bed as usual. Emma went down with a little complaining but not as bad as usual, we are talking she only semi whined for like 10 minutes and then was asleep. So I was thinking this was awesome and went about doing whatever I felt like because hey, I was all alone.
Todd came home at about 10:45 and as I was talking to him about his day I started to hear Emma whine in her room. I thought great now Todd can go tuck her in because he hasn't seen her yet today and then we can all just go to bed. Not the case. She informed Todd that she was no longer tired and wanted to stay awake forever. Also, it was just far too hot for her to sleep. He talked to her for a few minutes, sang to her and then left her alone. She cried the second he walked out of the room. We tried to just let her be for a few minutes and go to sleep but there really was just no way that I was going to be able to sleep with her crying. So we went back in to talk to her. Todd thought it would be a good idea to get her out of bed and show her that it was dark in the house and that we all were going to bed. This ended up being a very bad idea.
We tried just about everything to convince her that it was time to sleep. I tried to make a bed for her to sleep on the floor in our room, we put her in our bed, I laid by her in her bed, I sang to her, but nothing was working. We finally decided to just ignore her and hoped that she would eventually get bored. We could hear her doing something in her room as we were in bed and the next thing we knew this was happening.
I guess she decided that we needed a little reading material. At midnight. These were the books for Dad. Then I told her that I didn't want any books and she walked away, totally dejected.
I took her back to her room, put her in her bed and closed the door. She has never gotten out of her bed by herself or opened the door before but I guess desperate times call for desperate measures because the next thing I knew she was right next to my head again telling me she was too big to sleep.
At this point I did what any good mom would do. I put the gate up so she didn't fall down the stairs in the dark and went back to bed. I believe I dozed off for a few minutes and then was woken up by Emma standing in our bathroom trying to cut her fingernails. A very important thing to do at 1:00 in the morning.
I took her back to her room, in her bed, closed the door and then proceeded to sit outside her door and hold it closed so she couldn't get out. I felt like an A+ mom as I sat there and listened to her scream "mommy, mommy please come back, I NEEEEEED to get out of my room." Is two and a half too old to let your child "cry it out"? She would get really quiet and just when I was about to leave she would start crying again. We both fell asleep around 2:30, on either side of her door. I know this because I was woken up a few hours later by her rolling into and kicking the door in her sleep. I tried to open it so I could put her back in her bed but she was in the way and there way NO WAY I was going to risk waking her up again.
Hopefully this is not going to be a trend in the future because I am pretty sure neither of us can function on only 5 hours of sleep on a regular basis.
And in case you were wondering, Katelyn slept through the whole thing. She is awesome.
6 comments:
Good Heavens that girl has some endurance. We actually recently had a night very similar to this with McKenna and of course my biggest fear was that she would wake up Ben. Thankfully, just like Katelyn, he slept through her screaming and pounding on the door. I also hope this passes quickly for you guys! Good luck! Maybe a growth spurt?
Ahh nuts, that is the WORST! Kind of funny BUT still the WORST!!
No way! This is an awesome post! My two year old is totally crazy. Nice to hear other moms are out there going through the insanity.
This is kind of funny and not funny at the same time. It's honestly about time you had to deal with something like this, and no joke, we've had a nearly identical situation with Lucy....right down to the forty books on her bed. It's in those early, horrible morning hours that I promise myself that we won't have any more kids. But then we all start sleeping normally again and I feel much better about life :) If nothing else, it makes for some great blog posts!
I love it! she is great
Her face is what was cracking me up.... Also I love that she was cutting her fingernails. Thata girl :)
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