Claire's will power

I will adamantly admit to one major mistake Josh and I made thus far in our short years of parenting. Of course, it started innocently enough. We made the same “mistake” with Levi, but somehow he was not negatively affected and this issue never became a problem with him. Claire is a different story; she is a different child; and she has enormous will power.

Our mistake? Co-habitation. I love sleeping with my children. I love looking at their beautiful, peaceful faces, kissing them goodnight one extra time, and knowing that they are safe next to me. Levi often slept with Josh and I. It was very satisfying. Very rarely, he wakes up in the dark of night, and mysteriously appears in our bed. He is cautious, gentile, quiet, and most importantly, still.

There is no quiet bone in Claire’s body. Cautious and gentile are not words that mean a lot to Claire. And at night, she is anything but still.

Claire coming to our bed started rather harmless. She would wake up crying around midnight, we would be tired, and just brought her to bed with us. That slowly morphed into her crying a bit, getting out of her own bed and loudly making her way to our bed. Naturally, she transformed again. This time into a quiet child who noiselessly crept into our room, climbed effortlessly into our bed, and instantly fell asleep. Neither Josh nor I knew she had come in. That is, until she moved. Claire is a big fan of sleeping sideways. She also likes having her head on a stomach and her feet on the other person’s stomach. She switched stomachs often during the night. Needless to say, this got annoying rather fast.

We should have put a stop to it earlier, but it just kind of crept up on us, gradually. When the kids came back from Grandma Kay’s after my surgery, we decided it was the perfect time to put a stop to our unwanted bedmate. We had a perfect excuse too; Claire has been obsessed with my scar. She asks me everyday to see my band-aids and is very concerned because I cannot carry her. “You not carry me momma?” I hear daily. “Your belly hurts momma?”

So, six nights ago we did it. We talked to Claire and laid down the ground rules. We told her that my belly hurt too much and that she had to sleep in her bed. All night. She totally was on board. No problem. Until 12:30 that is. Of course, she woke up. Of course, she screamed, and, of course, we had our first battle. That night she woke up Levi and he was pretty upset. Our solution that night was to let Levi sleep with Josh and I would sleep in Levi’s bed to comfort Claire during the night. Worked out great. The next night she woke up, and we did another variation of the previous night. Worked out even better than the previous night. On the third night, she woke up, but went back to sleep wonderfully in her own bed with not much complaint. The fourth and fifth nights were perfect. No noise. No crying. All sleeping. I totally thought we had it.

Last night I went to bed a bit before 11. Josh was working on a PowerPoint presentation for his Emergency Room rotation that he has to give on Monday. Around midnight he heard a sound upstairs in the bathroom. He went up to investigate and found Claire. He asked her if she had to go to the bathroom, and something about the way he asked or the words he used just did not sit well with Claire. She started screaming. She started yelling. She started crying.

Lately Claire has been doing a lot of these tantrums during the day, and we just have been ignoring her. Josh applied the same principle. He let her cry and carry on in the bathroom for about half an hour. Her favorite position during that time? On her back kicking the bathroom door. Don’t forget, she was screaming the entire time. She finally managed to get up and open the door. She then carried on her tantrum in the hallway.

During all this she kept screaming “I wanna sleep in momma bed!” Over and over, we heard this request. Josh would calmly tell her no, wait a bit to see if she was going to settle down, then leave her to her tantrum.

Earlier in the day I had just finished reading John Grisham’s book “The Chamber.” This book follows the last four weeks of a death-row inmate and his lawyer as they try every single appeal possible to halt the execution. From insanity to ineffective legal counsel. They try every appeal at the three possible levels: state, federal, and supreme courts. There are many times that we hear “no” to the same argument. Last night, Claire reminded me a lot of the lawyer in The Chamber. She used every argument she could think of, with the end goal being her sleeping in our bed. Here are a few of my favorites. “Papa said yes,” “Momma said yes,” “I am cold,” “I will sleep really fast,” “I’m tired,” and “I don’t like Bitty bed” (Bitty is her nickname). Again, each excuse was preceded with “I wanna sleep in momma bed” and was accompanied with tons of snot, tears, and yelling. At one point she tried to run by Josh in an attempt to sneak into our room. She really did try everything.

This lasted until 1:45am when she finally fell asleep in the hallway. She slept there on a blanket and covered herself with a towel for the rest of the night. She got the towel from the cabinet when she was banging the door against the wall a zillion times. Her last words to Josh? “I love you Papa.”

Levi once again proves that he is capable of sleeping through anything. He never knew what was happening just five feet from his bed. Amazing.

I am so totally amazed by the way Josh handled Claire last night. He was so calm and patient with her. I know that things would have ended a lot differently if I was the one dealing with this tantrum. Even when Claire was yelling for me, and screaming that she did not want Papa, he told her no, and that she had to deal with him.

Wow, last night was hard. It definitely beats out the newborn baby stage. I feel so sorry for my neighbors, with whom we share a bathroom wall. I am sure Claire was perfectly audible in their apartment last night. Sorry.