(little Charlotte let loose in a TriBeCa playground...click on pics to enlarge)
Anyone out there know any good exorcists? E-mail me!
It's about 7:39 pm, and Charlotte (now seventeen months old) is RAGING in a manner normally reserved for summoning the minions of Lucifer to vanquish the damned souls of this cursed, misbegotten Earth. We put her down....well, we attempted to put her down...almost an hour ago, and she's been foaming at the mouth and bellowing like Mariah Carey caught in a bear trap ever since (which is why I'm currently opening my second beer of the evening). We're in the process of RE--Ferberizing, and it's not going at all well. For those unfamiliar with the cruel practices of the sadistic Dr. Richard "Dick" Ferber, he is the founder of the "let'em cry it out" method of solving children's sleeping problems. In a nutshell, you basically say "good night" to your unsuspecting young'un, tell them you'll see them in the morning, and then turn off the light and shut the door. Invariably, the child starts crying and screaming and yelling and whatnot. After five minutes, you go back in to console and re-assure them (although under no circumstances are you to pick them up). After this, you leave again. If the crying and screaming continues (and it generally will), you go back in again after ten minutes. Repeat this in mounting five minute increments, and eventually --- or so the theory goes -- your child will basically give up and learn how to put themselves to sleep (as opposed to you rocking them to sleep or whatever had previously worked for you). We did this several months ago, and after a few highly unpleasant, guilt-ridden nights, Charlotte adapted and we had a nice little schedule going.
What they don't tell you about the Ferber method is how easily it is for kids to fall out of it. At this point in little people's lives, routine is paramount. Deviate from it even marginally, and havoc can ensue. Over the course of the summer, we've gone away a few times and altered Charlotte's little schedule in the process, basically un-conditioning her of the sleeping routines we'd fought so hard to establish. Every time we thought of re-starting the process, some weekend plan arose that would've stymied it. So, we put it off. Essentially, we're now back to square one, and Charlotte's having none of it.
So we're starting over with the Ferberization, but Charlotte is now older, more manipulative, more savvy and a thousand times more willful than she was when we first started the process. Where it only took about fifteen minutes to get her down before, it's now taken at least an hour and she's putting up a lung-straining display of defiance that would otherwise make me proud were it not my ears and conscience that were being preyed on.
Our other strategy in the campaign to get her to sleep better at night it to attempt to get her all tuckered out during the day. This means lots of trips outside in the fresh air. Now that she's walking, trips to the playground have become entirely more stressful (for me) affairs. Where once we could put her in the swing and be done with it, that's now not even close to being good enough. It's striking how bored with the swings she's become. I mean, really, what's the point in just swinging back and forth when there are steps to climb, obstacles to fall over, knees to scrape, toys to steal, parents to worry and fellow children to terrorize? I certainly don't remember being this aggressive as a toddler (can't speak for the Mrs.), but Charlotte has absolutely no qualms whatsoever about muscling over to another unsuspecting munchkin and commandeering whatever toy it is that they are fleetingly grasping. I find myself constantly chasing after her to frenziedly circumvent the instances of tiny fisticuffs. You also can never tell how the other parents involved are going to react. We've been lucky so far, but I've spotted some heated interactions that -- had they taken place in a bar as opposed to a playground in front of their doe-eyed offspring -- would've surely devolved into melees involving broken bottles and boots to the groin.
Even outside of the playground, Charlotte is keen on constant mobility. My wife and I took her to Hudson River Park over the last couple of days, and in very short order, Charlotte was happy to charge over to our fellow sunbathers, giddily ignoring the concept of personal space to engage them in a language known only to her.
So, that's my life, really. By day she's a pint-sized whirling-dervish with little or no respect for social parameters and by night she's a tireless human car alarm hell bent on waking up Lower Manhattan.
This week, however, we start Day Care! Full report to follow!
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