Cry Me A River

In the spirit of achieving milestones with our children, Randy and I decided this past Saturday night that it was high time to "Ferberize" Dorian.  No, not Febreeze him (although the way the kid fills up a diaper, one would think that a good dose of Febreeze would freshen him up), but rather the "Ferber Method" of sleep training, better known as "cry it out".  Frankly, at 13 months and 22 pounds, it was getting extremely tedious (and heavy) to walk him to sleep every night.  "Walking" involved Randy, pacing up and down the living room, for upwards of two hours getting Dorian to go to sleep.  In the "old days" when he was a little tiny baby, I could nurse him to sleep and that would be the end of it, but now that he's a big boy, he's still nursing, but not conking out from it.  Dante had already weaned himself from the breast by this point, but Dorian is showing no signs of wanting to stop nursing and I'm not going to stop until he's ready (barring of course, that he is 35 years old and walking down the aisle, a la "Little Britain" style). What can I say? Dorian is a boob man.

I know that the C.I.O. method is a "Mommy War" topic, along with circumcision (our boys are snipped), breast vs. formula (I nurse but don't think formula is poison), religious indoctrination (guess which side we're on), spanking (never, no way, no how, nope, nada), and many others that escape me this early in the morning, but it works for us. Dante was C.I.O'd when he was about this age and he is not emotionally damaged or scarred from it.  Incidentally, you can read about our adventures with Dante's Ferber process HERE, HERE, and finally HERE. Gosh, he was so little. *sigh*

Anyway, Saturday night, Dante spent the night at Nonna and Nonno's and Randy and I decided that it was time to sleep train Dorian.  Having done this once before, you would think that I was prepared for the screaming and crying and guilt (and I'm not talking about the baby), but I wasn't, and it was a rough night for me.  Randy had to keep me from running into the room to swoop up Dorian, as any mother's instincts would dictate when hearing her child in distress, but I was strong and brave (and stuffing my face with ice cream......yes we all have our soothers) and I stuck it out.

Night one was horrible to say the least. Dorian literally howled for hours.  And I'm not talking regular "baby howl", no, Dorian was pissed! You could hear the anger in his voice wondering why the hell he wasn't being paraded all over the house.  Randy went in every 15-20 minutes with a cold cloth, wiped his face, gave him some water, told him he loved him, and would walk out.  I was not allowed in there, due to the aforementioned swooping, so I don't know all the details, but considering I was glued to the baby monitor with my ice cream and Kleenex, I have a good idea of the happenings that went down.  Finally, at about three am, Dorian threw in the towel and laid himself to sleep.  In the morning, he woke up giggling and smiling and clapping his hands to our "good morning" song, showing no signs of trauma, emotional scarring, and/or resentment towards his horrible parents for not letting him rule the household.

I was apprehensive about Night Two and ready for the fight.  Dante was home so Randy and I warned him that he was going to hear the baby scream and yell a lot and to not be upset. "Mommy and Daddy", we explained, "are not hurting Dorian. We are just trying to teach him to go to bed by himself like a big boy."  The stage was set, Elmo was prepped in the bed, storytime was over, the boys said "night night" to each other,  Dante was in bed, and I finished nursing. We were all prepared for "Howlfest 2011, round two".

But it didn't happen.  It didn't effing happen!  I put Dorian in his crib, stuck Elmo in his arms, turned on the music soother, kissed him goodnight and walked out of the room. He fussed (not cried) for about 10-15 minutes, maybe less, and then it was silent. Randy and I were shocked.  We peeked in on him and he was out cold, butt up in the air, snoring away.  Seriously, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would not believe it.  Now here's the kicker. This was at 8pm.  He woke up at 1am for a feeding and was back to sleep by 1:15, and just now at 5 for another. He was awake this time after nursing as I put him back in the crib, repeating the steps from bedtime last night.  After walking out of the room, he hollered for about 5 minutes and then.....silence.  I checked in on him, and there he was, fast alseep.

Could it be that he's"getting it"?  Is this a fluke? One can only hope.  It would certainly be awesome.  Let's see what Night Three brings.

TO BE CONTINUED.......

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

I seem to have reached that stage in my pregnancy in which I would like to change my mind. It happened with Dante, and I blogged about it then, but in that case four years ago, my mind was being changed due to the fact that I was terrified of giving birth.

This time around, I would like to change my mind for completely different reasons. First and foremost, Dante and I have a good thing going here. We have our own routine, our own "thing"; we're a great team. Now, I'm going to bring a new baby into the mix and it's going to screw everything up! Secondly, I enjoy sleeping. The amount of sleep I currently get, scratch that, the amount of sleep I used to get before getting pregnant was really not bad. I got a good 6 hours at least. Nowadays, with the pregnancy keeping me up at night "preparing" me for the new arrival, I'm lucky to get 3 or 4 hours. I can only imagine what is yet to come. Thirdly, I'm terrified of this C-section. So terrified that I would like to detract all of my statements from my blog linked above about Dante's birth and say that I would much rather birth this kid the "normal" way instead of being sliced open like a Tauntaun on Hoth and have my innards spill out everywhere.


And last, but certainly not least, I'd like to change my mind because I don't think I can do this again. What the hell do I remember about babies? I hardly have any memories of life when Dante was an infant due to sleep deprivation (See, reason #2 above) and plain old exhaustion. Now I'm going to start all over again?!?!?! The diapers, the round-the-clock feedings, the spit-ups, the gross poops, the crawling, the not crawling, the hours spent working on new words, walking, new foods, strollers, car seats, carriers, tummy time, and on and on and on and on and on.

I seriously have got to be crazy.

So I am officially changing my mind here. I have no idea how I am going to be able to accomplish this, but I currently have Stephen Hawking on speed dial working on some sort of time machine for me.

Common Sense and Consideration

It's 4am. It's 4 effing am. Ask me what the hell I am doing "blogging" at this hour. The old me, (read: pre-kid me) would usually just be getting home from dancing all night to Covenant's "Dead Stars" or the latest release from VNV Nation. But this is the new me, the mom, the old lady who goes to bed at 10, reads her book club assigned reading, and is asleep before 11.

I'm awake and blogging because some idiot 2 STREETS OVER has decided to party like it's 1999 and blast this reggae/hip-hop/techno/rick james/sean paul club remix from

• their car?
• their house?
• a bad radio?
• 2 turntables and a microphone?

No clue. I have no clue what Mr. DJ over there is playing this shit from but it woke me, woke Randy, and caused the neighbor's dog to start howling right by the window Dante's room faces, and guess what happened then? Fucking asshole. Right now, I've got The Smiths running through my head with choruses of "Hang the DJ" repeating themselves over and over again.

Who, in their right mind, looks at their watch and says, "Hey look, it's 3:30 in the morning, let me blast my music so the whole neighborhood can know that I have both bad taste in music and little or no consideration for the fact that it's 3:30 in the FUCKING MORNING and people are probably sleeping." Really. Who does that? I bet it's the same guy who drives in the middle of the road instead of picking a lane. Or the guy who throws their trash all over a kid's playground. Or the guy who sits there in a public place, like a restaurant or shop, on their cell phone and talks so loud about "bid'ness" or "bitches" with no regard that there are little children near them. Or even These Guys over at Nanny Goats in Panties.

What ever happened to common sense and consideration? Where is the logic in blasting your music in the middle of the night? Who thinks that this is ok? Even if you come from Broken Home Town and your name is Orphan McLonelyton, and you've been raised by wolves and have no social graces, what could possibly compel you to think that "3:30 am" plus "stereo" plus "this one goes to eleven", is a good and sound choice?

The irony is always this: I call the police to report noise violation and by the time the get their derrieres over here, the music is either turned down or Lawrence Welk has decided to turn in for the night. Either way, no citation is issued, no wrists slapped, no evidence of noise, and I look the "that crazy lady who hears things in the night". I wonder if that happened tonight as I was sitting here with my watery eyes, staring at this bright white computer screen.

I guess I'll go read until Reggaefest Craputron 2008 ends.

Like Father, Like Son

All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own. - Plutarch