Night, night

the big silver thing by his face is the plastic penny, the rest are probably in his hand...

Unlike his brother, who is the worlds best sleeper, putting Thomas down for a nap is always an interesting experience, and is almost always harder than putting him down for the night. I think he may have clued in that while he has to sleep, the rest of us are partying with play-dough and paint and markers and all the other things he has been banned from playing with because all he can do is make a colossal (usually un-clean-up-able) mess with them. Recently, he has been copying Samuel who is earning quarters for doing small jobs around the house, by asking for "quarneys" (cross between quarters, coins and pennies). We obliged by giving him a few pennies here and there and he won't put his coins in his pocket, but carries them around in his hot little hand. If there is a coin anywhere on the floor, our little truffle pig will find it. Most of the time he is still clutching his quarneys when it is time to sleep and so takes them to bed. I realize that any parent who reads this is probably flinching at the idea of their toddlers tenderly clutching a few pennies before they can go to sleep, but he is determined. I tried to take them away once and the length and volume of the resulting tantrum is not something I am willing to risk again. So far, no pennies have shown up in his diaper, so I am pretty sure that he isn't doing anything but carrying them. We got him some big (6 inch) plastic pennies, but he is not fooled and all that accomplished was that he wants the real pennies as well as the fake ones. I have tried trading him for a flashlight or something more traditional like a teddy bear, but it's the pennies that soothe him to sleep best.

He has recently added a complication to his bedtime routine by insisting on being covered with all the spare baby blankets he found in his room. There is his special green elephant blanket, his buzz/woody blanket, his Nemo blanket and last but not least, topped again by his spare special green elephant blanket (which was actually never supposed to leave the closet unless he lost his first one) in that order. He doesn't care that it's 100 degrees outside, he's comfortable. I hand him his newly filled sippy cup, which promptly hands back with the request for "more." We have learned that walking out into the hall for a moment fools him to thinking we have refilled his sippy in the bathroom sink and he accepts it smugly. Often, while he is distracted between the pennies and his sippy, I can shoot off a quick "I love you" and bolt. The problem is that he drops his pennies and can't find them in all the layers. All will be quiet until I hear hysterical shrieks of "my quarney" coming from his room. Finding his coins involves shaking his blankets and laying him back down and layering him up again. By this time, he thinks he should be done napping and requires more finesse to get him to stay there.

He doesn't really start protesting until I get to the door. "Hand?" "Hand?" comes a quivering little voice in between the gaspy breaths left over from the quarney crisis. Reaching for his hand, I will usually oblige with the bedtime song. During the song, he seems to revert a little. He gets a big, goofy smile on his face like he used to when he was a little baby and I sang to him. In reality, he is probably laughing at my lullaby attempts but he does calm down a little. The minute I loosen pressure on his hand to let go, he starts whimpering again. In the past I tried to come up with excuses to give him that required my immediate attention away from the room as that seemed to work better than just walking away.

Me: "Thomas, I have to go find daddy..."

T: "NO!!!"

Me: "Oh, I hear Sam. I'm going to go find Samuel, Okay?"

T: "NO!!!"

Me: "Mama's going to go to bed, okay? Night, night"

T: "NO, NO, NO...etc."

one last ditch effort:

Me: "I think I have to go find the kitty"

T: quivery voiced, yet reluctantly letting go of my hand "OK, Mama"

really?

Apparently he thinks that the cat needs me more than him at any given nap/bedtime and we have a 98% success rate with that excuse. He used to insist on sleeping with his shoes on and his baseball hat (on backwards because it's just more of a challenge, don't you think?) Once I tried to turn it forwards for him so he could lay on it easier, but I got cussed out. I started hiding these items before bed and he has recently stopped. He has pennies stashed all over the house though.

This mostly reminds me that parenting is whole lot of trial and error and figuring out what works for your own kids. Anytime we leave our kids with family or a babysitter, we usually have a ridiculous list of instructions to make the job easier. Often we get the "I've watched/raised kids before" vibe but we genuinely feel you need to know that if baby is fussing and won't take the pacifier, then you need to put it in his hand and let him put it in himself, then turn him at a 3/4 angle and pat his back while swaying back and forth. Or that toddler won't eat his cereal unless he has a blue spoon and won't drink any beverage without a straw. And so on and so forth. We used to call different baby sitters in the ward to spread the work around, but lately we have been sticking with one since it got exhausting trying to explain the random behaviors of our children and also how to work all three remotes for the TV before every gig. This babysitter knows and respects the sippy cup deception and how to work all the remotes. She's a keeper!

Looking back at this it appears that my children have me jumping through way too many hoops. I prefer to see them as battles I am not willing to fight. If you want, I can tell you about the battles everyday with Thomas about the shoes I will not help him put on and take off again every five minutes. Or with Sam when he tries to argue that he is not hungry for eggs, he is "only hungry for brownies MOM!!!" There's plenty more where that came from.

The bedtime ritual is definitely delicate dance that I'm not sure I would trade anyway. It's so very typical of my unique, spunky, determined little Thomas. It would be nice though if the routine transferred to beds other than his own. As it is, we haven't figured out what random order of things will get him to sleep anywhere but home.

So next time I ask any of you to babysit (and you know I will) you will understand the seemingly endless list of things my kids need to function. It's not because I am insanely picky. It's because they are.

I'm doing this for you. You're welcome!