The Rest of The Night

Holy mother of fried chicken! The baby girl woke up looking for her mother at 1am. She had about three and a half hours of sleep. I had about twenty minutes because I missed her mommy too. Every time LMJ stirred I jumped to make sure she wasn’t plunging to her death. When her tossing and turning became “I’m up” I tried to console her that Mommy would be back tomorrow. She didn’t care about tomorrow. She wanted her here, now. I sort of distracted her from that, but not really. I think she decided I was completely incompetent in producing a Mommy for her slumbering ease, and decided to wait it out. So for the next four hours she made the rounds of her five or six entertainment stations in the house, getting more and more frustrated and fatigued every moment. I was overtired as well, and just wanted to make the problem go away. On the plus side, I found out my baby girl can handle an inhuman amount of tequila, especially since she only weighs twenty-eight pounds – just kidding HRS. I let her watch television and podcasts (I now hate Mickey Mouse). I read to her, but nothing calmed her down. We were both starting to lose it as 4am rolled around. She would doze off for a second, getting my hopes up, and then jerk herself awake. No matter what I did she wouldn’t let herself fall asleep. She was waiting for Mommy, dammit. At 4:30 I’d had enough and told her she it was time to go to sleep, and I wouldn’t let her watch anymore Mickey Mouse. She had the worst tantrum of her life. I gave up and told her she could do whatever she wanted to do, which is meaningless to a two year old and completely ridiculous for a 38 year old. I was on the verge of calling Grammy. I googled “What to do when your two year old has a tantrum” while my two year old was having a tantrum and trying to drag me out of my chair. I followed the instructions, well the first one. I calmed down and let myself realize that I’m an adult and she is a toddler. I picked her up, told her that I loved her, that it was time to go to sleep, and that I would read her favorite book, Busiest People Ever, to her (again). Strangely enough, she started to settle down. Maybe it was my demeanor because she didn’t like the exact same idea five minutes before. She sat still while I read to her and finally fell asleep at 5am. I think what worked this last time is I didn’t make the reading interactive. I didn’t stop to ask her what she thought. I ignored her comments and just read the story. Live and learn. She woke up at 8am, and fueled on adrenaline, went to sleep about twenty minutes ago. I bet being a single parent is just non-stop fun.