Big Girls Don't Cry

A running theme throughout the past few months has been the overall difficulty of dealing with a kid this age. Months 15, 16 and 17 were marred by nightly wake-ups, daily tantrums, and a general exhaustion (hers and mine) that, by the end of every evening, usually manifested in tears.

This month we've emerged into something resembling...well, I don't think it would be an overstatement to describe it as UTTER HEAVEN. It's as if a large percentage of the hard work we've been doing has paid dividends all at once. For one thing, the sleep schedule has stabilized -- it's 6:30pm to 6:30am, every day. She's not teething anymore, so she doesn't wake up from discomfort. With Ana's help, we moved her daily nap back from 9am-11am to roughly 11:30am-1:30pm, so she's less tired in the afternoon and evening, and thus less cranky.

What's really gratifying, though, is the gradual phasing out of the tantrums. (FOR NOW, that is. I might be doing all of this for the first time, but I'm not naive enough to think that she's left the tantrum phase behind at a year and a half.)

I've cataloged her tantrums on this blog exhaustively, so suffice it to say that anything and everything used to set her off. I've tried hard to be consistent in my method of dealing with the tantrums: namely, I don't. I sit nearby and wait them out. I stay quiet and, beyond telling her once that I'll be ready to talk to her again when she's done screaming, I disengage totally. Usually she cycles through them within 5-10 minutes, but I remember one epic tantrum in which she and I sat on her bedroom floor for what seemed like FOREVER. She wanted her blanket, which was hanging over the side of her crib four feet away, but she REFUSED to crawl over and get it -- she wanted me to bring it to her instead. We had a showdown. She almost won by sheer force of lung power -- I swear my ears were ringing afterward.

It seemed like such a silly fight to be having. I could have ended it easily by just handing her the blanket, and believe me, I wanted to. Was it petty on my part not to give in to her? I don't think so -- because what she knows now is that screaming for things doesn't work. So she's found other ways to get what she wants, they work much more effectively, and things are more peaceful all around.

That said, she threw a whopper this morning, the first in a couple of weeks. I was in my usual morning haze, eating a bowl of Trader Joe's Peanut Butter Puffins (if you haven't tried them yet, you haven't lived), and Sadie was playing across the room with her toys.

"Mama!" she yelled, showing me a toy that she hasn't figured out how to use yet (it's this one, if you're wondering). "Mama!" is Sadie code for "Come over here and do this for me." I told her I was eating and that she could bring me the toy, or she could be patient and wait for me to finish. She didn't like either of those options.

After the screaming had scaled down to mere sobs and sniffles, she did something she's never done before. She crawled over to me, laid her head in my lap, grabbed my hand and put it on her back so I could rub it. I stroked her hair and told her that I loved her and that next time it would make more sense to BRING ME THE DAMN TOY, GOOD LORD, CHILD, I'M RIGHT HERE AND IT'S NOT THAT HARD, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU, IT'S SEVEN IN THE DAMN MORNING.

Of course, I said it very sweetly. I want to encourage that sort of behavior. Forever and ever.