Kate (kate_nepveu) wrote,
Kate
kate_nepveu

Solo Parenting the Less-Sick Toddler, Day 2 of 5

I don't actually intend to post every day, but after last night's vent I figured I should say that she's much better today, enough so that I sent her to daycare for three hours in the afternoon with a clear conscience and will actually go to work tomorrow.

Of course she still took 40 minutes to go to sleep tonight, but that's kind of par for the course for us; she wants to discuss the names of facial features, and talk about her friends at daycare, and ask for her bottle/book/tissue/shoe/stuffed animal and—if given it—shake it and wave it around (she got me in the face tonight with Goodnight Moon), and point at the light, and grab for the shelf unit behind her, and and and . . .

We have tried getting her to sit down read sometime before we go upstairs with a bottle [*] and pacifier, to try and wind her down, but when she's not interested (which is usually), there doesn't seem to be much we can do about it. Oh, and baths are energizing not relaxing.

[*] She will only drink milk-like substances from bottles. She does drink water and juice from cups.

(At daycare she knows that after their mid-day snack, she washes her hands and then climbs onto her cot, pulls up the blanket, and goes to sleep. We've never tried this, mostly because if we try to put her down in her crib before she is limp, she howls and clings to us like we're proposing to drop her in lava, and we just haven't wanted to fight that battle. Weekend naptimes are usually nice, she goes to sleep pretty easily and you get a cuddle and a chance to read guilt-free. But bedtime—it's worse for me, because I don't usually put her down, but she does this with Chad too, to varying degrees.)

What did/do you all do to get your not-quite-2-year-old in the mood for bed?

Tags: parenting, steelykid
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