neurotic parent natter

[flea]

1. Casper really likes salty things. She eats slices of feta cheese plain and says "more cheese." (By the way, did you know that 'feta' in Greek means 'slice'? Hee.) She loves canned black olives. Tonight she sucked on the salt shaker. When she spilled some salt, she ate it using her wet fingertip as a tool. I am, of course, covinced that this desire for salty things is a) pathological and b) my fault.

2. The nights still suck. Up 2-3 times every night. We've also gotten into a very bad bedtime dynamic - she cries when we put her down, then quiets, but stays awake playing in the dark for a considerable time - up to half an hour. Is this normal? I'm worried it's a sign of Something Bad. We're talking about re-night weaning/re-Ferberizing this weekend when we can nap to give ourselves a break. The sleep deprivation is really getting to me again. But Casper seems so fragile right now - she woke up from her nap at 4 and cried for me for half an hour, until I got home. Conflicting needs. I thought listening to a baby cry was hard, but listening to a toddler sob, "mommy, mommy, up" is, if anything, worse.

In things that I am not angstifying about, tonight in the space of 15 minutes Casper colored on the wall with 3 different colored crayons and spilled sparkly pink paint on one of our nice maple dining room chairs. Hooray for soap-and-water-washable children's art supplies! Oh, and she licked the paintbrush - hooray for non-toxic ditto!

Comments

[hecubot.livejournal.com]

Too bad JZ doesn't read LJ, or she'd give you the lecture about kids and salt. She works for a pediatric cardiologist and regularly gets healthy eating extremist parents bringing their children in with blood pressure issues because they've cut all the salt out of their diet. At which point the doctor prescribes a bag of potato chips a day.

Anyway, I think babies crave what they need. That doesn't mean I leave an open sugar bowl around Emmett though.

I feel for you with the sleep issues. It's so draining and the toddler sobbing is horrible. I think my most heartbreaking was when Emmett was two-ish and having tantrums all the time. Once when he got a timeout in his room with the door closed, he was screaming and sobbing "I want to be a good boy! I want to be a good boy!"

I felt like the most evil Dickensian villain, when in fact, Emmett had totally deserved that timeout.

Playing in bed for half an hour isn't unusual. You might try changing bedtime rituals. It took a while, but I got locked into a bedtime process that started at tubtime, that took an hour and half but took out all the stress and the crying.

And it was good time too. Half an hour of tub and playing with him there. Half hour of getting dressed and reading with the lights dim and soft music. Half hour of walking the hall, singing lullabies, rocking and putting to bed. So that hour and a half didn't feel like a chore so much as a long quiet, intimate glide toward sleep. Sometimes litte poots respond very well to that kind of ritual.

Mind you, that didn't make him sleep through the night, but bedtime wasn't a trauma.