Why doesn't she sleep?

Lila is almost 3. In the early days, the fact that she had colic or reflux or was just a baby was a good enough reason for me to get up 2 or 3 times a night and go to her room. After that subsided and she was about a year or so old, she was still using a bottle to fall asleep and she would wake me up 2 or 3 times a night to get me to find her (empty) bottle for her and stick it back in her mouth. At 2 1/2, I decided I didnt want to do it anymore so we concocted an elaborately detailed story about the "ba-ba fairy" who comes to big kids and takes their bottles and gives them to new babies in need. "Ba-ba fairy" would leave some awesome big-kid present when she came.

It worked out perfectly. The same weekend we bought Lila her toddler bed, my mom wanted to keep her overnight so the next morning when she came home we told her all her bottles were gone but we had a surprise in her room for her. She was thrilled with her big-girl bed and her princess sheet and comforter set. The first few nights she cried a little and I attempted to help by lying in (her tiny) bed with her. I told her that since she is a big girl now, when she wakes up at night, she can just get up and come into our room if she needs to.

That was almost 6 months ago. To date, Lila has yet to get out of bed and come to us. In fact, she still wakes up 2 or 3 times most nights and just cries and cries halfway between sleep and awake. She cries "mommmmmmmyyyyyy" and although I try to ignore her (and about once a week this works and she falls back to sleep) I often resort to calling to her. "Lila, come on into bed with us," I say in my groggy 3am voice. But she just cries harder until one of us gets up and goes to her. She doesn't even WANT to sleep in our bed. And she never needs anything. It isnt that she fell out of bed or lost her blanket or even wants her back rubbed. She just needs us to come in. I usually go in, lay on her floor, and tell her to go back to sleep. This is apparently enough for her. And after 15 minutes or so, I get up and go back to bed.

But this has serious side effects on my sanity. It has been almost three years since I have had a good nights sleep. Because even when Lila has a couple of weeks straight of sleeping through the night (it happens randomly and then just stops) I am still awake several times a night just out of habit.

I live on the second floor of a two-family house. Just underneath Lila's room sleeps a 1 year old baby. If she cries, he wakes up and everyone is pissed. Likewise, they dont let their kid cry at night after a few incidents where Lila woke up and I was a total bitch the next morning. Letting her scream for 3 hours isn't really an option.

Anyone have any suggestions?

I thought it would suck less....WRONG.

Lila is almost 3. I have had it with the whining. Somewhere, somehow, Lila got the idea that any time she is even remotely displeased with anything all she has to do is whine continually and magic will happen and she will have whatever it is. (Actually, she got this idea from spending too much time at Grandma's but that's another blog).

Lila's whining voice is exactly the same sound as nails on a chalkboard....into an amplifier...with feedback screeching in the background. Plus, she managed to inherit my loud Italian projecting voice and uses that along with her remarkable whiny pitch to make me insane. At not quite 3 years old, she has absolutely no ability to be reasoned with and has a temper like a rattlesnake. She can be perfectly happy one minute and writhing on the ground like a mental patient the next. And it seems there is NOTHING I can do about this.

I have tried telling her "Mommy can't understand you when you use that whining voice." I have tried time outs (which she seems to think is kind of fun because she has to try to sit still for an unspecified amount of time). Often, I have to put her in her bed and shut the door and tell her she can come out when she's done being a brat. Usually after about 10 minutes she walks out all smiles and says "I'm done crying mommy." But it never lasts for more than a few minutes.

Sometimes she talks to me like I talk to her saying "COME...IN...HERE...NOOOOOW
...MOMMY!!!!! And I get to feel guilty because she learned to talk to people like that from me.

I have no idea what to do with this whiny brat that my kid has become. She is stubborn, as I know kids her age are supposed to be. But I feel like I spend so much time yelling at her and forcing her to "calm down" that I can't enjoy her. I am afraid she thinks I don't love her.

Wasn't it supposed to get easier when they started to become little "people"?

Something MUST be horribly wrong

I don't feel like bitching lately. Lila is still 2. I am still trying to find a job. I am still bored out of my mind. The only thing that has changed is that Lila is FINALLY (she just turned 2) sleeping through the night more than not. And when I say that, I mean like 5 nights a week. I however, am not.

After being woken up nightly for 2 years, my sleep schedule is full of disruption and I find I am awake starting at about 2am every hour or so, waiting for her to start yelling for me.

On another note, Lila was sick last week. Deathly ill it seemed. She had a high fever and threw up and cried and whined, and when I asked her if she wanted to watch Dora she cried "Nooooooooo" in the most pathetic voice she could muster. So I called in sick to my part time job and called the doctor asking for the first available appointment. "I have a sick kid here," I told her and described Lila's symptoms.

We got ready to go and Lila cried and whined and wouldn't let me comb her hair or take her pajamas off so she went in them. And as soon as we walked into the doctor's office, she decided she really just wanted to play with the toys and run around with the other (sick) kids. It was like nothing was wrong.

The other parents must have thought I was over-reacting and that my kid was a savage being out with wild hair in her pajamas and I got to feel like an idiot for the day.

OMG! Did I become a housewife without even getting married?

There are things in my life that I have always held dear, and through the strain of motherhood, very few of those things have remained intact. But one thing keeps on slapping me in the face. I don't want to be somebody's housewife. So much so that when Ben and I were talking about marriage we decided not to because I have such an issue with being his legal property even if in modern times it isn't REALLY like that (right?).

So (and here's a bomb being dropped) Ben and I have been going to couple's counseling because we had a hell of a transition from AZ to here and also because he believes I can be a real asshole sometimes and I think he can be too much like a nagging wife. So we've been working all this out and it seems to be going really well and we're getting along and then it occurred to me that Ben no longer nags me. And he no longer complains that I am working too much (because I only work part time now) and he also refuses to do bedtime because "he hates it" and financially, the whole house rests on him.

Through the wonders of couples counseling, I have tried to be more open and loving and attentive to him when he has a rough day. I am trying to understand that I can't pass Lila off to him immediately when he walks in from work no matter how much I want to strangle her at that moment. I am primary parent who spends the most time with her and I have come to accept that. Its me she wants when she falls down and its me that gets up with her at night.

When the fuck did I become Donna fucking Reed? How did this happen? I was happy being the reluctant mother. I am still pissed off. I still hate doing dishes. And yet I DO THEM. ALL THE TIME. Whoever said the only constants in life are death and taxes never lived with a 2 year old because toys on the floor and dishes in the sink are ALWAYS a-plenty.

I am pissed that I am his housewife without the benifits of being a wife. I am pissed that I got suckered into it. And the worst part is that he still wishes that I was working full time! Why, so that I could also work 40 hours a week but then come home and pick up your shit and tend to a kid that learned to say bad words at Grandmas house? No thanks.

Maybe I am just having another bout of my typical commitment phobia. Maybe it's a little too late for that though.

The dreaded shots

I had to take Lila for her 2 year check up the other day and I started dreading it weeks in advance. Would it traumatize her forever? Now that she is old enough would she scream every time we mentioned the doctor because she remembers being poked and stuck with needles?

Turns out, no. My brave girl didnt even cry when they gave her that one shot. She had the pouty face and looked like she might burst into tears, but she didn't. And when they did her finger prick she said "OWWW" but was fascinated as she watched them squeeze blood from her little tiny finger.

Once in a while I am so proud of her that it makes me want to puke.