Friday, March 21, 2008

The Ultimate Showdown

(cue the rocky music . . . . )

because the ultimate showdown =

mom v. ellie
coming to you live from Pocatello
twice a day every day for the rest of my life!

Ok, not the rest of my life but it feels like it. Sometimes it seems she wants to sleep, she'll get her soft blanket and cuddle on the couch and close her eyes -- so I'll gather her up and bring her to the rocking chair in her room where we ALWAYS read at least one book and sing a song. And traditionally she'll close her little eyes and sing along until she's out. Or I put her down and she's out in a second.

Welcome to 2008. Where Ellie plays mom for all she's worth. She is willing to cuddle in the chair to get books read to her . . . and then when I look down to get ready to sing the transformation has begun -- she all of a sudden has that steely-look in her eyes, so determined to take control of this napping situation, if I want her down then she will NOT go down. She hasn't taken a nap since last Saturday. And it's not that she doesn't need it, the longer the day goes she gets more beastly, and yesterday she fell asleep sitting up at 6 pm at Nana's house.

My newest method is to wash my hands of every part of the control battle -- at the right time I'll do the routine = rock, read, sing. At any point if she's having none of it I just put her down in her bed, put the baby gate up on her bedroom door and walk away. If she won't nap she WILL stay in her room. Even last night she was exhausted and I go to put her down for the night and she still got the "if-you-think-i'm-going-to-bed-you-must-be-on-crack" look in her eyes. I just turned off all the upstairs lights, put up the gate, said night-night, and went downstairs. I have NO IDEA when she really nodded off to sleep. I do know at 10:30 when I went upstairs to go to bed I peeked in her room . . . she was laying on her back sleeping with both hands folded behind her head, she was still wearing her fleece-footed-jammies (thank goodness) but she was wearing one of her monster snow boots. It was so cute I would have taken a bloggable picture if I knew it wouldn't have woken her up.

So wish me luck. The battle continues twice a day, every day, until I lose my mind.

4 comments:

  1. Oh I feel your pain! Good luck with the naptime. The tragedy of losing the nap is that most of the time I feel like I need it way more then she does!

    And I actually did have Rocky music playing when I read this!

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  2. I mean, in my head!

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  3. I am so glad to hear other mom's are experiencing my greatest battle! Our problem is not really getting Nora to bed but she is waking up at 11:00, again at 2:00 and then at 4:30 thinking she should get up for the day. She screams, gets out of bed muliple times(we are thinking of doing the baby gate tactic) and even throws her toys from her bed. It is maddness! So my new idea is to just let her scream it out until she figures it out. Ahh! 2 year olds!

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  4. Anonymous11:19 PM

    I so totally hear you on this one. Isaac has been pulling the same kinds of stunts. But it's only been since the time change. Maybe they're just adjusting to the time change and everything will go back to normal soon ... please oh please tell me it's just the time change ... I can't take this much longer!

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