improvements

Just a note to check in and let anyone who is still following our sleep travails know that the latest technique change is working.

At the end of our newly refined routine, he’s down to about 45 seconds of Mommy Mommy before he gets quiet and goes to sleep; the first few nights it was 10 minutes, then 15, then 5… I wish we had a video monitor because I don’t actually know if he just spontaneously passes out mid-cry or actually spends some time lying in bed quietly. I suspect it’s the former.

The 20 minutes of mommy-sits-by-the-crib-and-does-pretty-much-whatever-Jonah-asks part of the routine have varied in character from night to night. One evening, he spent the whole 20 minutes pretty much running around the crib in circles, only settling down in the last few. Tonight he requested that I “Do Ohm” almost the entire time, while also demanding one hand on his chest and three blankets laid on top of him (used to just be two).

As our routine has gotten more clear this week, with the results being positive, I’ve started to enjoy this sitting time I have with him on a new level. I’m looking at his eyes more. I know that sounds odd, but most nights of his life, I’ve been trying to lull him into submission, which doesn’t exactly call for eye contact of any kind. Now that we have this quiet-ish lying-down play period together, we smile a lot. We wrinkle our eyes at each other. We make little jokes. “Close your eyes,” he says, and then closes his for a second.

The look in his eyes when I finally leave the room breaks my heart though. He goes from restful to just this notch up towards anxious and starts to breathe faster and get all panicky-looking. And starts crying.

I mentioned it to Scott who pointed out that Jonah does the same thing when you take away his onion.

What?

This morning, Jonah spotted a red onion on the shelf in the fridge and demanded to “Hold it!” He likes to hold “Garrrr-lickk” too. Why? Who knows. So Scott let him hold the onion for a while. Jonah brought it with him into our room. Played with it on our bed. And then, Scott hit that point, that we both do, where you’re just thinking, you know, enough of this. That was fun but now we’re done. Onions belong in the fridge.  You’re ready to move on to another activity. You’re sick of thinking about putting the onion back. And you take the onion away from him.

And his face goes all puckery and he cries.

There’s a lot of will in this little man. And we’re constantly facing that question of whether the thing we’re trying to take away or the activity we want to stop doing — how important is it really?

Do we need to take the onion away more often? Does he have to get in touch with his lack of control over his life? Or are we supposed to give in to the onion as often as possible? More than we can stand? Build our stamina. Give him more control over his life.

He’s started throwing things. When he’s mad, if he’s not already holding something, he’ll find something to grab and throw.

I’m trying to think of a sample moment. It’s been happening a lot. The triggers are definitely about control. I can’t remember what I wasn’t giving in to or taking away from him earlier this evening but he grabbed the cordless phone and threw it on the floor.

I told him we don’t throw the phone. I told him I was angry with him. Ummmm, yeah. Didn’t really register.

So this is why parents do that “time out” thing, I thought to myself.

I tried putting him in his room. Looked around, decided it was childproof enough in there. I closed the door.

He pulled on the door handle and opened it. Proceeded to play peek-a-boo with me in the doorway for the next ten minutes, open/close/open/close.

I tried to ignore him. But it was hard.

He wanted attention. At one point he started chanting “Huh-neeeye. Babe. Hon-eey. Babe.” — Because this is what Scott and I shout out to each other across the house when we’re trying to get the other person to come help us with something or bring us something.

So that was pretty funny.

And then Scott came home and I got a break, which was good.