Quinn can stay up many hours after bedtime entertaining herself. Sometimes - scratch that - a lot of times, she ends up coaxing us back into her room at least once for something or other. Bedtime is between 8 and 8:30pm. We leave, but she continues to keep herself up by talking to herself, singing, playing with her dolls, whatever it takes.
I'm posting this as a reminder of how good focused she can be. Kirch was out of her room by 8:15 tonight. By 9:45, after her usual one-on-one conversation with herself, she began crying more than just a usual whiny cry, so I went in to check on her. She said a noise scared her and she wanted me to stay with her. I stayed for about 2 minutes, then she told me she wanted a "little drink of water." Here we go... so I made a deal with her. I get her the water, but that means I not going to stay with her anymore. Fine - she got her water and I left the room. Not 5 minutes later, we hear on the monitor, "Mommy cover me up." We decided that we were going to wait this one out. She ALWAYS, ALWAYS finds things for us to do to prolong the falling asleep period. And we let her do it (shame on us), so we've been trying (the operative word here) to break the habit. Now was as good a time as any to ignore her plea, and thus began the THIRTY FIVE MINUTES of meltdown crying for one of us to cover her up! At 10:20, I heard her at her door crying, so I had no choice but to go in and sternly tell her to get back into her bed. After she did, sweaty and sobbing, I quickly threw the sheet over her, gave her a kiss and told her, "there - you're covered. I love you now go to sleep. Enough!"
In less than 5 minutes that child was out! She has some serious will power, I tell ya!
No comments:
Post a Comment