good-bye paci, hello big girl bed!

Big changes around here.  Life altering changes…both for the little gal and her parents.  Molly is no longer in a crib.  And Molly no longer has her ga-ga (her paci).

We decided to make these changes right after Christmas.  December 28 to be exact.  And today is January 23.   And we are still fighting her on it.  Here’s a little summary of our journey.

I had the brilliant idea that we should take away Molly’s ga-ga at the same time that we moved her into a big girl bed.  I thought we could help her see that she’s now a big girl in a big girl bed and big girls don’t use ga-gas.  At first it seemed brilliant…but that was before bedtime.  We also had heard of friends who’d used the strategy of snipping the ends off the pacis instead of just taking them away cold turkey in hopes that it would help wean the child off the paci.  That’s the strategy we chose to employ…for better or for worse.  We sat her down and explained the excitement of the big day.  She seemed cool with it all.  She didn’t even freak out at all when Travis snipped the ends of her precious ga-ga.  Inwardly I was praising my wisdom as a mom…I’d waited until she was ready!  I’d come up with a master plan about ga-ga removal and big girl bed transition and the child understood it!!  This was going to be the smoothest transition yet!

And then it was time for naptime.  She didn’t sleep.  Not a wink.  She screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed.  We heard her sobbing these words, “WHY DADDY CUT MY GA-GA????” It broke my heart.  Poor kid had never known a night without her beloved ga-ga and was having to learn to sleep all over again.  But naptime only lasts a couple of hours and then they get up and life goes on.

But then came bed time.  And it was ugly.  UGLY, I tell you.  The child had become a monster.  She didn’t just sob in her pathetic little sad voice about her grief over her chopped off ga-ga.  She screamed.  Like a big old lion roar of a yell.  “NNNOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”  And it wasn’t a sad yell…it was mad.  The girl was furious with us.  She kicked the wall.  She threw her stuffed animals across the room.  She threw any and everything she could get her hands on.  And she just kept on going.  The first night lasted 2 hours.  And then she slept.

This pretty much has continued for the past 31 days.  It’s gotten better.  In retrospect, I’m glad we did both big transitions at once.  At least we didn’t have to get all the way through ga-ga removal only to enter a new level of parenting insanity and transition to the big girl bed.  We just did them both at once.  She really stays in her bed quite well.  That was only a problem for the first few days.  But when faced with the consequences of getting out of bed to announce to us that she was “going to wake up now”, she really hasn’t done it since.  And nap time has gotten so much better.  I was worried that she wasn’t ever going to sleep during the day time again.  And this made me very very very sad.  And tired.  But the naps have returned.  They’re much shortened…going from close to 3 hours to an hour and half tops.  But I can’t complain.  I know there are kids out there that are done napping by 2 and a half.

But bed time.  It’s still nightmarish.  There have been a couple of nights in the last 31 that she’s gone to sleep without crying, but I’m pretty sure the only reason for that was pure exhaustion.  Every other night she’s screamed for up to 2+ hours.  I’d like to say that I feel like it’s getting better because the crying will only be 10 minutes one night, but then we’ll have another 2 hour night and we’re back.

We’ve tried having her take a special toy to bed in place of the ga-ga.  She gets excited to pick it out.  But then that fun ends quickly.  We actually let her have her ga-ga in her bed with her and she clutches it in her hands.  That doesn’t seem to help.  And the thing about it is, I know she can go to sleep on her own.  I KNOW she can. She’s done it for 2 and a half years.  She just hasn’t done it without her ga-ga.  So now that it’s been 31 days, I feel like my little stubborn, strong-willed daughter is making this into a power thing.  Because I’ve caved on many nights just to get her to STOP YELLING, I’ve gone and sat with her until she fell asleep.  Now she wants this every night.  I’ve created a monster!

We’ve also learned another fun fact about our little gal, without the paci in her mouth at night…she talks in her sleep.  But it’s not really talking…she yells.  Loudly.  She screams NO! in a very defiant voice while she’s sleeping.  We’ve run in her room numerous times at night to see what’s wrong only to find that she’s sound asleep and yelling NO! in her dreams.  I think she’s dreaming about ways to challenge me…little stinker.

So…this explains the lack of blog posts.  We’ve just been dealing with our head-strong daughter.  And trying to catch a few winks of sleep between her sleep-yelling sessions.  Parenting…it’s not for the weak.

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