The Great Soother War of 2010

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There is a small window around one year old when most children are ready to give up there soother. We missed it or didn’t care enough about it at the time. Recently, Jon and I decided that this would now be a good time for Livi to give it up. We have been talking with Livi for weeks now about giving up her soother to the Fairy to give to the babies. She was on board with the idea and even excited about it. I came up with the idea, inspired from her ‘Olivia Acts Out’ book, to send her soothers “up, UP, UP to the moon!” to the Soother Fairy to give to the other babies. When she made it through the night soother free the Fairy left a present. In Livi’s case it was a baby doll with her own toy soother… we were hoping to reinforce the idea that soothers were for babies. 

 They are all tied on…
 One last pep-talk…
 Ready… Set…
Go!!!!
 
Wow!

The first night was hell. She cried on and off for 2.5 hours! 15 minutes of crying, 30 minutes of play… the hours went on like this. She eventually wore herself out and fell asleep. I think she woke up once that night, but I can’t be sure. It’s all been a blur. 


Each morning since she has woken up an hour earlier than normal or been up for over an hour in the night and slept in. She has not napped except for on the third day out of shear exhaustion. Getting to sleep at night has heard less and less crying every night but the quality of sleep has not improved. 

Surprisingly, Livi has only asked for her soother once the first night. She understood that it was gone but does not seem to have the tools to put herself to sleep with out it. We have tried EVERYTHING we could think of and even researched for new ideas on the internet! We extended her night time wind down routine, introduced a bottle for before naps, put towels on her window to keep her room darker, rocked her like I did when she was a baby, tried sleeping with her, tried to show her other things to suck on (thumbs, fingers, blanket, fuzzy), tried to teach her to rock herself in bed, tried white noise, let her cry it out, jumped to coddle her at the first whimper, gave her lots of praise for sleeping soundly, etc… NOTHING worked.

Yesterday was day five of little too no sleep for all of us. Livi was barely coping, not listening well, hyper and grumpy at the same time, not sleeping and I was officially sick with the flu. Sleep deprivation did not help my immune system. Livi wasn’t not napping because she was ready to give up her nap, she didn’t know how to put herself to sleep without the a soother. She needs sleeps for her health and development. I needed a nap. I needed my sanity! After one and half hours of Livi not napping yesterday, I was defeated. Livi had won. The Soother War of 2010 was over. I gave her a soother. She slept for 2 hours. I slept for 2 hours. I feel like a bit of a failure but we all needed our sleep. I had already discussed the possibility with Jon after he had been up with her for nearly an hour the night before. He almost gave it to her then 🙂

We gave it our best shot but realized she was not yet ready to be soother free. We are instilling more stringent rules around it now though… in hopes of maybe weaning her off of it instead of the cold turkey approach. She is only allowed to have it in her bed when she is sleeping. We already had a nap and night time rule but would let her have it during morning cartoons and evening wind down time sometimes. No more! Only in bed!

Am I being to harsh on Livi and myself? I think this soother thing is bothering me more than normal because all the literature says 2yrs is about the cut off time. She should be ready. Livi has always been on par or ahead of the literature. I know I sound like a total controlling mother/stuck-up cow but when you have a child as easy as Livi has always been, it is hard not to expect every parenting step to be just as easy. She is going to be a horrid teenager just because I said that, isn’t she?

I think the other issue going on here is my own. Realizing it has made me more okay with letting her have her soother back. I sucked my thumb until I was almost 11years old. I was very self-conscience and, I’m sure, teased about it. My mom tried EVERYTHING to get me to give it up. It turned out that leaving my birth father did the trick 🙂 It was a coping mechanism for me that went on for longer than was normal. I need to remember that Livi doesn’t have the need for that coping mechanism…. this is just a developmental phase that she is not ready to give up yet. I need to step back and watch her for when she is ready, not tell her when she should be ready.   

My First Born

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I haven’t updated on Livi recently. Well let me just say that she is AWESOME! I love being her mom. She makes it easy… most of the time. Lets face it, she is a 2 year old.

Her language skills are sky rocketing. She continues to talk non-stop but her annunciations are getting so understandable! I really love it. She is starting to say some pretty hilarious things…

Me: What’s that on the wall Livi?
Livi: Just pizza, Mommy.

Me: Don’t eat the Playdoh Livi.
Livi: I not eating Mommy, just tasting.

Livi: (as we were driving up a really big hill) “Up, Up, Up to the moon!”

Livi: (after being woke up by selfish Mommy and Daddy for midnight cuddles) “Where’s the rainbows?”
I think we must have got her out of a dream for that one.

It seems to me that Livi has a very developed imagination for a two year old. She has been talking to her stuffed animals since she was about 18 months old. Now she has whole conversations, makes me kiss them goodnight, has me talk to them instead of her, has them clean up after herself and describes the delightful scenes she sees in her scribbles. Have I mentioned that I love it?!

Being a two year old she is slightly manic. Her ups are very up! Shrill and screechy in a pleasant sort of way. Her lows are loud and stubborn in a very frustrating sort of way. I’m scared for her teenage years! I entered Livi’s second year of life thinking that if these were the “Terrible Twos” that everyone is talking about they aren’t so bad… but apparently they don’t really start until they are 2 years old plus one month.

I slowly started time-outs with Livi just before she was 18 months old (I think) and they have been great for her! We had decided early on that we were not going to spank or use any form of physical punishment on our children. With my background I don’t trust myself to spank when I’m not angry and I can’t emotionally handle a man spanking a child… even if they do it properly. So, we started time-outs as more of a break from things when Livi was acting up, to remember how she is supposed to act. It has been awesome. If she is getting frustrated she will put herself in time out and come back to the situation calm. I love that it isn’t seen as a punishment to her. I like consequences much better. Generally, I just ask her if she needs a time-out or is she going to listen to mommy. If she chooses a time-out she comes back, apologizes, gets hugs and kisses and does what I was asking… generally speaking 🙂 She is two. 

Potty training had been a breeze up until a few weeks ago. She had been pee trained within a day and poo trained within two weeks. Well a few weeks ago she started having more than the odd dribble before she went on the toilet and even had two poo accidents! The number two accidents happened when she was playing really hard so I can excuse those with she being preoccupied but she seems to have regressed with the peeing for some reason. She is not having full on accidents. She is just having a rather large drip (big enough that I have to change her pants too) and then holding in the rest until she gets to the toilet. There is no new stressors in her life that would justify regression so I’m a little puzzled. Someone suggested that she may have been to young to begin with, but I really don’t believe that. If she were too young, she would not have been potty trained in a day and have a near perfect record for nearly three months. I’m don’t really know what to do so we’ve gone back to the basics… chocolate chips when she poops on the toilet and putting her on every few hours whether she says she has to go or not. It seems to slowly be working.

Livi is in a big girl bed and she LOVES it. EVERY morning the first thing she tells me is that she slept in her big girl bed and she’s been in it for over a month already. It isn’t actually a real bed. It is just her crib with one of the railings taken off. We are holding off on the official big girl bed until we move her to her new room. it just saves us from having to assemble and take it apart more than once.

Livi has recently mastered zipping up her own jacket with out any help from Mommy or Daddy. She can take her shoes off alone too but refuses to even try pulling her pants down alone. She doesn’t like getting her hair done but understands it is a necessary evil to getting it out of her face… It is always in her face. She can open most doors now but still stays in her room in the morning until we come to get her. She will sometimes open her door to see if she can see anyone but shut it if no one is there and return to her stuffed animals to play. The only time she really cuddles is if she is watching cartoons and definitely has her favorite shows : Sesame Street, Elmo’s World, Super Why, and Dinosaur Train.

She has developed the art of fake crying. She can actually do it really well but it always starts with a “meh”. I can’t help but laugh, but I probably shouldn’t. She has begun crying to try and get things. She has also begun having some major separation issues with going to nursery. When we talk about it at home she is really excited to go and play with all the kids and toys, but when we get to church and start walking to nursery she starts getting really clingy. If I leave, she throws a crying fit. I feel terrible and haven’t left her without me or Jon. Its so unlike her so I don’t know whether to cater to her or push her through it. She is fine with being left at other places, it is just nursery. This week her Auntie Danielle is supervising so I’m hoping to get there with Livi and hopefully her Auntie Danielle can help Livi get back to normal.

Last Monday we went to the Apple Barn! What a fun place! They had a petting zoo that Livi loved! She went on her first hayride and wasn’t afraid at all! She didn’t go on the zipline and the slides were  really steep and fast so we didn’t let her go on them. Aside from the petting zoo the pillow trampoline was the biggest hit! She had so much fun!

Kisses!
The petting zoo was her favorite part.

She tried to pick it up but it was too heavy…

So she sat on it instead!

She had so much fun on the pillow trampoline,
but there was some bigger kids on it so she spent a lot of time on her bum 🙂

Thanksgiving Whirlwind

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As you could probably gather from the title of this post, Thanksgiving weekend was a whirlwind of friends, family, food, laughter, and a whole lot of love! Apart from three Thanksgiving meals with family, we got to celebrate Jon’s best friend get married too!


Friday night we went out to the delicious rehearsal dinner and ended the evening with a spur of the moment date with my love! He took me out for a night cap and creme brule! Saturday we had a delicious ham dinner with my family and as usual played Scrabble! 

Sunday was our really busy day! We woke up that morning and thankfully had all our bags packed or we would have be really behind schedule. We left Livi with my mom because she was going to go to the Wiggles with her Aunties that day! I had bought tickets for us forgetting that we had a wedding to go to. I couldn’t sell them so Livi still got to use her ticket and “she” invited her Auntie Lisa, who was visiting the mainland for the weekend, to take my place! Livi had a blast, and Auntie Lisa enjoyed seeing Livi have fun… I’m not sure that the Wiggles was her first choice in concerts 🙂

After we said goodbye to Livi, I dropped Jon off to hang out with the Geoff and the rest of the grooms entourage. Jon was the best man. I went to finish up my make up and make an appearance at Jon’s extended family gathering’s annual Thanksgiving wiener roast! The wedding started and the bride looked gorgeous, the groom cried, my husband looked dashing up there in his suit 🙂 The party as a lot of fun! Good food, friends and I actually enjoyed dancing! I’m not a dancer but I let loose and danced the night away… thanks to a few drinks 🙂 


Monday we enjoyed a lovely breakfast and conversation at a cute little coffee shop in Fort Langley with some friends and then went to meet up with Livi, who had stayed the night at Jon’s mom’s house after the concert. We had yet another delicious meal that afternoon of Wetaskiwin Ribs. No turkey this year but that was fine with me 🙂 Everything else more than made up for that!

It was a really great weekend. I have a lot to be thankful for… I’m thankful for my family, for precious moments with Livi, cuddles and love with my husband, good talks with my mom, laughter with my sister, and even china pictures from my brother! I’m so thankful for all the supportive, understanding and tolerating friends in my life that make me laugh, listen to me when I bitch and push me out of my comfort zone. I’m grateful for my beautiful grandparents who have taught me so much. I am also thankful for good food, great alcohol, family weekends, sleep, a child that sleeps, fireplaces, fall sunshine, flowers, sushi, Egyptian cotton sheets, beautiful dresses, cameras, music, pedicures, the allure of princesses to little girls, Glee, massages, Christmas, okay… I’m slowing down now so instead of trying to think of more stuff I’m just going to end 🙂 Happy (slightly late) Thanksgiving Everyone!