These last several days have been very bad with our little girl. Last night was a disaster. Basically, she is just crying all the time and Shannon and I can’t figure out what or why.
It is not a all unusual for her to be seemingly tired, but when placed in her crib she would cry, rolling around, and unable to settle herself to sleep. This can go on for in excess of an hour. Since nothing else has worked, I decided that I’d try letting her stay up with us last night while we watched Netflix in the evening. She was actually quite pleasant, enjoying jumping in her jumper and being held between Shannon and I. But she did start yawning and she was placed in bed. She only slept for a couple of hours before she was up again at around 2am. Shannon had relocated her to our closet, where there were at least two doors of sound insulation from Everett’s room. Despite this, at 2:45am, Everett had had enough and came into our room saying, “My tired.” He went to go pee, and then snuggled with Shannon back in his bed. I had to pick Sierra up and move her down into the basement bedroom, where we actually had a Pack ‘n Play set up for cases like this. She cried for another half an hour before sleeping, and then she was up crying again at 5am.
The throughout the rest of the day, if you even hint at putting her down for a second, either on the rug, or crib, or car seat, she would start cranking like a hard to start car engine into full gear crying.
Shannon had had enough and was close to wringing her neck a couple of times. I find that if she is in the carrier, she is generally ok, and I still have to hands to do things with. When she is on the change table getting a clean diaper, or changing clothes, she would inevitably cry and struggle. While Shannon gets frustrated, I don’t take it personally and just work through it like it was a task to be done.
My secretary Julie told me that her son was like that too and cried all the time. At the age of 11, he told her at bedtime one day, “I understand that I was a difficult child when I was younger. I wanted to say that you did a good job mom, as I am still here and alive.” Haha – well, I guess we have 11 years before we may get that thanks.
I find that it doesn’t matter what we do at night – it could be some sleep routine, it could be telling her it’s ok, or feeding her, whatever – she will still cry. In fact, last night she wasn’t even hungry and surprisingly, she sometimes doesn’t even seem hungry when she gets up in the morning. So because it doesn’t make a difference, I just try to get as much sleep as I can at night, because being sleep deprived during the day is no good to any one.
Sierra turned 6 months two days ago. Shannon recalled that at this age, Everett was starting to make some monosyllabic sounds like “dada.” Looking back at the music station video, he was up and messing around with the music toy. Sierra isn’t doing much of this yet. She just makes sounds and “aahhhh’s” but no syllables, and honestly she isn’t getting to play with toys too much. She grabs at hand sized objects and is able to transfer toys from hand to hand, but I don’t think we’ve actually had her play at more of the toys.
I felt bad for this, that I haven’t had as much devoted time to Sierra. Part of this is that she is crying all the time, and it is not long before she gets tired of playing with whatever has her interests and starts arching her back, kicking and crying. But part of it also is that when she is not crying, we are busy playing with Everett. So we don’t get to encourage her at the music station, or take out the pyramid rings to get her playing with them. I’ll try to devote more individualized play with Sierra when I can. When Everett is out at day home, we do get some one-on-one opportunity, but even when Everett is around, he is smart enough that we can encourage him to teach Sierra some things by telling him to “show her how it works.”
Everett in the meantime continues to be a good boy, and especially during these trying times with Sierra, actually does quite well. He still wants us to “go downstairs” all the time and play with his “Paw ‘trolls.” “Hi, how’s it going?” his pups always asks. He is developing quite the imagination now. When we are busy, like today washing the dishes, Everett was playing on his own with his Paw Patrols and his Little People toys. I had the music on a dance mix, so Everett would get up from time to time when the music changed and do his little dance: standing in one spot, rocking his bum back and forth.
Everett is pretty much potty trained now and he hasn’t had an accident for a couple of weeks I think. He is weaned off of treats too. He has this neat personalized book called “The Boy Who Lost His Name,” and having read this several times, he can almost spell his name. Tonight he told Shannon “E-R-E-T-T Everett!”
