testing....1...2...3...testing

I'm not surprised.  As I was googling (it's now a verb) the phrase "When did my three year old..." the first phrase to pop up was "When did my three year old turn into a monster?"  That wasn't how I was going to complete my search terms, but it fit so I went with it.  

First, off - you didn't miss three months of Britton's life.  She doesn't turn three until August.  But if I do any internet searches on two-year-olds, I get information that just doesn't apply to me.  Parents of two-year-olds are worried about moving from the crib to the bed, or a refusal to eat anything but fish sticks, or their kid refusing to poop.  We're beyond that.  I needed to know why my kid was getting out of bed.

Such a little angel, no?

Don't let this accessorized pint-size fool you.  She aims to give me an addiction to parenting chat rooms and just enough cold medicine to take off the edge...

I go to the grocery store on Thursday nights, and two weeks ago after I left Britton got up from her bed and found the hub.  He led her back to bed and that was that.  We chalked it up to Memaw's visit and figured she'd get back in line.  One week later, with me on the way to the grocery store, she did it again!   We were baffled, but figured it was a fluke.

It wasn't.  Sunday night Britton refused to stay in bed.  I did the stupidly ridiculous thing of trying to reason with her (I know, amateur hour over here!) and even took her temperature, certain that such ornery behavior must be caused by a raging fever.  She wasn't sick, but she wasn't going to stay in bed either.  As soon as one of us put her back in, she was right back up.  

I'll tell you a little something, so you know where I'm coming from.  I know this is normal behavior.  My intellectually-sided brain matter-of-factly knows that Britton is getting to an age where she is testing us, testing our boundaries, and thinks getting out of bed is a great way of getting to play a little longer.  She also started refusing baths, but that's just more of the same thing - the "you can't make me" syndrome.   But the emotionally-sided brain doesn't care for facts.  My parental anxiety doesn't come out because of strangers, or random accidents, or horrible diseases Britton might catch, or where Britton will go to college.  My anxiety has always been inexplicably linked to Britton not sleeping.  Not just "oh, she's delaying bedtime for 30 minutes."  It goes more along the line of, "If Britton doesn't go to sleep when she gets in bed, and gets out of bed every five minutes, then she will never go to sleep tonight or any other night for the rest of my life and I will have to spend the next 17 years trying to get my child to go to sleep."  Ridiculous, I know.  I can hear it in my own head.  But at the time, it doesn't seem ridiculous, it seems all too real a possibility.

So, because of that, I can't be in charge of getting her back to bed.  She begs me to take her to my bed, she cries for one more story.  In short, I want to cave in the hopes she'll get back in bed.  But we all know she won't.  And no extra book will ensure Britton just go back to being a kid that stays in her bed.

The hub, however, approaches it differently, and in my opinion, correctly.  He meets her at her door (no peaks at the fun night life that tempts her to get up), puts her back in bed, puts the blanket on her, and leaves the room.  No drama, no yelling, no threats.  If she gets up again, he does the exact same routine again.

Sunday night she screamed and yelled and cried and carried on until 9:36 pm.  For reference, she goes to bed around 7:00 pm.  But last night, she gave up after about 4 trips out of bed, and was asleep by 8:00ish.  We are hoping that tonight the whole fiasco lasts even less time.  

Part of me is thinking, "We already did sleep training at 4 months old!  Why do I have to do this all over again?"  It does seem really unfair to go through sleep training twice.  But it really comes down to being the authority in the house.  The hub and I have to be the ones calling the shots, making the rules, enforcing those rules, and punishing with logical consequences when the rules are broken.

In short, I have to be an adult.  Ugh.