Lydia has a couple of molars coming in and she hasn't been the happiest baby. But of course she's so happy to see Charlie at night that he doesn't believe me. ;)
That's not why it's been rough though.
On top of me being sick all week Natalia's going through some sort of phase. And bare with me it's long and I'm going to babble a lot to try and get it all in there.
I'm not sure how/why or exactly when it started but it was about two weeks ago. And it's getting progressively worse. She is fighting bedtimes and nap times like a banshee. She does bath, reading, singing just fine. Then it comes time to put her in bed and she flips a switch. All the sudden she starts to whine about not wanting to go to sleep, that she's not tired, that she doesn't want to be alone, she needs to change her jammies, that she doesn't want this water cup she wants that water cup, that she doesn't want this blanket to sleep with she wants that blanket to sleep with, that she wants to sleep in our room (but the few times we've brought her to our bed to try and get her to sleep in the past she just plays so we gave up on that idea very quickly) every excuse in the book will come up. We get her in the bed somehow and then I'm required to sing I'm a child of God and Twinkle Twinkle again. Then Charlie hast come back in and do the same, then I have to come back and do the same. If it were up to her we'd keep going back and forth. Then we try to force it to stop and the whining usually turns to crying and it's just a big fat mess. Most times she totally melts down at this point. This all started happening at nap time as well so we tried to pull naps. Didn't really help much at all except that she was so exhausted at the end of the day sometimes we can trick her and say we'll go get daddy or go get mommy and she falls asleep waiting for us. We tried letting her cry it out too. The first time she finally crashed after 30 min! (Even as a baby she never cried that long) the second time we tired she cried for almost an hour before I gave up and went in there. Only to get her calmed down but then for her to freak out again once I went to leave. Finally after another 45 min of it I went in there and brought her downstairs and tried to put her in time out. She calmed down and by then was so overly exhausted (and it was 11pm) she finally agreed to just go to sleep. BTW she is still in her crib, I decided to wait until we moved to make the switch just because I didn't want to make a big change to a new bed right before we were to move only for another big change to happen. Thought the move and transition to a new room would be smoother this way. She is totally capable of climbing out of it but never does, even on nights she's stuck crying she just lays there and cries. The third night we tried was very much the same. Except when I put her back to bed at 11pm she flipped out again and I ended up sitting on the chair in her room until she fell asleep. I hadn't wanted to do that before because I didn't want to start a new bad habit. Yesterday (Saturday) was the Boise State bowl game and so with everyone here we had her skip her nap again. We've taken away tv/computer privileges which to her just means "no shows" thinking maybe something she watched scared her? but also thinking it would be a good incentive for her to go to bed easily. Ha not so much. Anyway, I let her watch once episode of Little Einsteins on the computer during the game because she got so bored during it.
She was so tired and ready to pass out right then and there. IT did give her a little rest though and she got her second wind quickly. Last night at bed time I was really cautious to follow our little schedule (which I printed out with pictures for her to follow, read that somewhere) and kept reviewing it with her as we finished each thing. Anyway, she was about to melt down but Charlie told her he'd come back in to sing to her and sit with her while I put Lydia down. Well she of course was so exhausted she crashed before he could finish. But then woke up at 12:30am and 6:30am crying that I wasn't still on the white chair and that she wanted me to sit there. GRRR. Bad habit formed. Add that to Lydia waking up fora bottle at 4am and of course I'm not going to get any better. I wouldn't mind doing it just at night time if she goes down so quickly every time, but I'm sure eventually she'll twist that into something that will also become a power struggle and 5 min will turn into sitting there for 30plus min. But to do it throughout the night as well? ARG! I'm seriously at a loss as to what to do for her.
I feel like I've read and tried everything but I know I haven't because I haven't been able to fix this. I feel like I'm failing as her mommy because I can't figure out how to comfort her and figure out what she needs to return to our good sleeping habits.
She told Charlie the lady bugs in her room scare her so I took down all the decals for her. (they needed to come down soon anyway so we can start packing) but come on. We offered to move Lydia into her room so she wouldn't be alone and she told us no she wants Lydia to sleep in her own room. I tried telling her that when she sleeps well again we can get her a big girl bed but she doesn't care. I bought a little princess sticker book thinking it would give her a fun incentive to do better. Worked once now she could care less. We tried taking away the Elf (which she finally named Jingle) and told her that she was up too late that Elf didn't get to go back to Santa until it was super late so she didn't want to come back home and stayed with Santa in the North Pole for the day to rest. Jingle even left us a little teeny tiny note to explain. But Natalia didn't care. I tried putting the Elf in her room to give her comfort that she wasn't "alone" but she didn't care.
I'm stuck. I'm tired, frustrated, and I'm feeling beaten by this. We seriously need help. I'm waiting on a book from the library to hopefully help, but am on the verge of just buying it for my Nook so I can get it read already and find something that might help us. Other then that it's call the sleep lady I had that day with and pay her a butt load of money to help us. I JUST WANT TO SCREAM.
Anyway, I feel like everything else I would normally blog about leading up to Christmas is suffering because I'm just so out of it.
Ok I'm being sent off to take a nap.
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