4 posts tagged “2yo”

Just a little story from bedtime yesterday:

I was whispering secrets in my 2-year-old's ear, as I often do.  One of them was "You are so special.  There's nobody in the whole world just like you." 

She excitedly told me that she had a secret for me, as she often does after I tell her one.  She cupped her hands to her mouth, leaned up to my ear, and said "There's nobody in the whooooooole world.... that... that... likes you."  Followed by a hug and a big, beaming smile. 

Ahh, these special mother-daughter moments.  :)

Hm... now why in the world would my 2yo daughter be afraid of this, do you think:

Nutcracker

We had a shortage of christmas decorations, so my mom gave us a bunch of her old ones.  Hard to be picky when you're getting free stuff that you couldn't afford to buy on your own (not that you'd ever, EVER buy it on your own).

He tried out several different spots around the house, the most short-lived being the corner of the landing up to the second floor, since it meant that the 2yo wouldn't go upstairs.

She never actually cried or got upset.  It was more of a stop, a suspicious stare, then a refusal to go into the vicinity of the nutcracker.  "Don't like dat, Mommy."  (Oh, and when I tried to demonstrate his nut-cracking mouth in an attempt to make him seem less sinister to her, oh look at the helpful friendly nutcracker, wanting to help us eat our nuts... well, no, it didn't work, it didn't work at all.)

In the end, he spent 90% of the holiday season crammed in the back of the closet, behind the boxes where we put our paper recycling. 

Thankfully (and finally), he got taken away by an oh-so-lucky freecycler last week. 

Getting help from a 2yo while folding laundry can make everything a lot more interesting.

I've had to put away a lot of my anal-retentive tendencies since having a baby two years ago.  I'm challenged, on a daily basis, to go with the flow in a way I've never had to do before.

Everything from mealtime to crafttime is a new opportunity to stuff my desires to, say, wipe her hands off every 3 seconds, or secretly "fix" the eyes on her crafts so they're just a bit straighter. 

While I'll never be a laid-back, "ehh, whatever" kind of person, I'm really indebted to her for making me, at least logically, realise the benefits in just letting go and trusting that things will work out, even without my having full control over every detail.

Example, bedtime. 

Let it be said that I'm strictly in the non-cry-it-out camp when it comes to sleep issues.  What's amazing is that I haven't had any internal struggles about this choice, despite lots of contrary opinions surrounding me, from everyone from my close friends to my MIL, to my own partner.  (This is amazing because with pretty much every other aspect of parenting, I'm filled with a ridiculous amount of self-doubt and anxiety about the myriad of ways my choices are screwing up my kid forever). 

Nevertheless, or perhaps therefore, bedtime struggles have resulted in some of my hardest, loneliest parenting moments... you know those moments, the ones when those horrible fleeting thoughts of "I absolutely cannot do this for one more second," start circling, and if it continues on for too long, other even more horrible emotions creep in, like frustration, anger, resentment, and then the resulting guilt and shame. 

However, despite those hellish moments, overall, the first two years bedtimes and nighttimes was actually not too bad. 

I put it all down to two things: 

1. My belief in the choice I had made for Miyoko and myself,
2. and of course the positive payoff from my having chosen the right path for us. 

I admit, I cringe a little to type these words... if you know me at all, you know that I'm not a confident person, and even feeling, let alone showing, the remotest hint of confidence often smacks of arrogance to me... Yet at the same time, I'm proud of myself for being able to do so - there've been only a few times in my life where I've made a decision I felt strongly about, stuck by it despite so many others feeling differently from me, and been able to look back and feel no doubts about my choice... I'm willing to sound arrogant in order to not let one of those few precious times go. 

Although yes, I still really feel the need to draw your attention to my judicious and diplomatic addition of the "for us" at the end, there, since if there's anything else I've learned being a parent, it's that one parenting style is not "right" while all the others arre "wrong."

The first thing, my strength of conviction in not letting her cry herself to sleep, allowed me to have peace and serenity during those long hard nights.  Okay... during most of those long hard nights. 

Yes, I desperately needed sleep, showers, a healthy meal, and a myriad of other things (catching up on taped episodes of Canadian Idol, for example) that I really do believe all people, new mothers included, need in order to maintain their own sanity.  But there was no way I was ever going to be able to enjoy those things while my baby screamed bloody murder alone upstairs in her darkened bedroom.

The only difficult times occured on those nights when I allowed questions about my choice to creep into my mind.  "Am I doing the right thing?"  "Is everyone else right?"  "Am I teaching her to be spoiled or too dependent on me?"  These are the thoughts that made my peace and calm fly out the window, making space for panic and stress and frustration. 

It's amazing to me that it was always entirely in my own mind, entirely within my own power, whether I had an easy or a hard time (and resultingly, whether my child had an easy or a hard time).  No, it never had anything whatsoever to do with what anyone else did or didn't do on any particular night.  I believe this is the case with so many parenting issues, and probably life issues in general, although my brain cells are too limited to think about that right now.

The second thing, the benefit we reaped from my choosing the non-cio route, was pretty amazing, too. 

The horror stories about what would happen if you didn't put your foot down with your baby at nighttime just never came true in our house.  She didn't get spoiled, she didn't come to believe she could manipulate me, and she didn't get worse and worse when it came to bedtime issues and nighttime sleep. 

My going to her at 2am when she called out to me didn't guarantee that she'd wake up at 2am every night thereafter, and it definitely didn't make her start waking up at 2am and 5am just because she knew I'd rush to her side.  My bringing her to our bed when she woke up in the morning didn't make her start waking up earlier and earlier.

In fact, when I just allowed her to find her own way, with the comfort and security provided by my presence, she rarely did anything but move forward, in terms of going to sleep quicker, with less time and effort required from me, and sleeping longer through the night. 

There were backward steps that occurred when she hit certain milestones, or had disruptions to her life or schedule.  Just recently she went through a period where she seemed to be having nightmares, and bedtime suddenly became much more difficult for awhile.  (This, in fact, is what prompted me to write this entry.)  But from everything I hear from those who sleep-trained their babies, the same thing happened at their houses, too, so in this we're no different.

Do I think that my child now, or ever, went to bed, on a regular basis, in a way that my sleep-training friends and relatives thinks is ideal?  No.  I'm fairly certain that my method, over the last two years, did indeed result in my cradling her, nursing her, singing to her, and comforting her much much more than I would have if I'd decided to let her cry-it-out.  I spent much more time in her room at night than my partner would have, if we'd gone his route, much more time than my close friend, a big believer in sleep training, spent in her daughter's room, etc.

I don't pretend otherwise.  The beautiful thing is that this doesn't bother me in the least because... well, see "thing no. 1."  Yes, I spent a lot of time cuddling her and nursing her at night, but it wasn't as torturous as it could have been because I had that serenity about my choice. 

Oh, and she just turned 2 years old, and I have to say, looking back over 2 years (which were somehow long in one respect but in another, passed in the blink of an eye), filled with all that nursing, cuddling, rocking and singing - those moments were some of the best and sweetest moments we had together as mother and child, and the fact that I spent more time doing them than other parents just makes me feel lucky.