Yes, they're both thumbsuckers. And yes, I realize this photo is close to two years old. And yes, that's our bed. At naptime, which was a rare event for Emily at age 3, which is likely why we took the picture. And Penny has the bassinet behind her, so she couldn't roll off the bed. (All safe-parenting questions answered?) I was scanning through my photos and realized I haven't taken pictures of the kids sleeping in quite a while. Except for this one.
And, yes, in this one, only Emily and Daddy are sleeping. We're not technically family-bed people, although Emily makes forays into our room in the middle of the night about 50% of the time. And about 90% of the time, we're too tired to do what you're supposed to do: Walk the kid back to her own bed.
Penny, on the other hand, as mischievous as she looks at what I'm guessing is before 7 am, sleeps in her bed all night. Part of this is the fact that she's still in her crib and, besides a scary incident at about 15 months (before I removed the crib bumpers), does not or can not climb out of it. Part of it is that we wised up on our second stab at parenting and never brought her into our bed. Even when she was nursing at night, I fed her and carried her back to her room. Ah, my own space. Well, except for the (then) three-year-old next to me. Arrgh!
So, Penny night-weaned and slept through the night earlier, fell asleep on her own at bedtime, and waved bye-bye happily from her crib from around the time she could sit up. Not that we haven't had minor rebellions since then, but we've always been able to maintain the same routine and get back to bedtime bliss pretty quickly.
Oh, but now she's two.
Now she can say things like, "More books, more books!" in a desperate, weepy voice. Last night she even sobbed through the second to last book and the last book in anticipation of the time when the light would go out and the parents would leave. This from the child who actually toddled/trotted/pranced to her crib at bed- and naptime to our delight and (false) pride at our awesome parenting skills. Now she pulls out all the excuses: "Jammies on?"(she loves to change clothes) "Pee-pee?" "More books!" A couple of nights ago, she convinced us to leave the lamp on, but when she still wasn't asleep 30 minutes later, we had to turn it off (to renewed screaming).
(They have a nightlight in their room and the door is open to the light in the next room.)
She screams. And whenever anyone comes back in to tell her to calm down, to find out what she needs (we try to minimize these trips, really), she demands to kiss us. "Kiss, kiss," she says, through her tears. "Huggy, huggy." How can you resist this, even when the tiny lips are covered with the liquid snot of her angry tears?
She will get over it. We will get over it. We will probably put off that "big girl bed" thing for a bit longer, though, because I'm really over angry two-year-old by 8 pm.
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