Tonight - she wins...

 

She is sleeping in MY bed right now. Not her bed, but mine.
Tonight she won the bedtime battle. All of the other nights went okay this week, but not tonight.

Everything was fine with our little Juliette at first, she was happy and playing fine. She ate her dinner and took a bath with such joy that I was feeling pretty confident about the bedtime routine. She was giving out free kisses and smiling a lot.

Picture this:
I peered into Juliette's room and saw her sitting on the floor. Her bed was nicely made (I'll take credit for that) with her Dora Blanket set and a few of her stuffed animals were sitting next to her Dora pillow. She sat there next to Elmo and a little dog stuffed animal pretending to feed them...
"yumm yum yumm," she said after each of them took a bite(pretend food). She hadn't noticed me yet. I watched as she would gaze up at the TV and get a glimpse of Blue's Clues. It was a peaceful scene so I decided to seize the day, well night.

I approached with caution, "Hi Juliette, what are you doing?" I sat down next to her on the floor and said hi to Elmo.

"ommy eat?" Juliette gave put up her spoon and gave me pretend food then watched to ensure that I got a good bite.

"MMM, yummy!!" I exclaimed.

"Mo-mo, bite.." she gave Elmo another bite.

I decided now would be a good time, "Juliette it's just about time for bed." I said this in such a nice way I thought she couldn't reject me.

I was wrong.

"Daddy, Ommy?" Juliette whined. I knew what she was trying to say was,"am I sleeping with you and daddy?"

"No hunny, you sleep in your bed like a big girl and mommy and daddy will sleep in their bed." I put my arms out for her to hug me. Instead, she jumped up and like a bolt of lightning ran to her bed, grabbed her blanket and pillow and bolted out of the room. I started to run after her and as I made my way to the living room, she threw herself on the floor on started to throw a fit. Not just any fit, a huge tremendous melt down. Her legs were kicking and she was bawling while managing to get out the word, "daddy."

Of course when joe heard this he immediately went to her aide(he is such a sucker for her). "Does Juliette want to sleep with Mommy and Daddy tonight?" he asked her as my jaw dropped. There goes all of our hard work from the past week.

"YES!!" Juliette yelled as she jumped up and pointed into OUR bedroom.

Joe reassured me that it would just be for this one night. Yea, okay, Sure, I've heard that before!!!

When we got into our bed, all she would do is play.
"eye," Juliette pointed to my eye.
"nose," she poked my nostril almost making it inside.
"ear," she giggled as she stuck her finger in my ear.
"hair," she pulled a peice of my hair.

"Ouch!!" I was over exaggerating of course.

"Boo-boo?" Juliette leaned in and kissed my head.

"Thank you, now Juliette go to sleep or you will be in your bedrooom. No mommy and Daddy." I kissed her cheek.

"Daddy!" She said as she rolled over and began to tell Joe all of the parts to his face.

This went on for about 10 minutes before I told her once again that it was time for bed. She huffed and puffed, but after another 10 minutes, she was sleeping. And so was Joe. Great.
I was left all alone after battling wits with a toddler and was only trying to make it possible for some alone time with Joe. If I had only told them both "No." But who wants to argue when the odds are not in your favor? A screaming child and her father, both rooting for her to come to our bed....ughhh.

Oh well, I guess tomorrow is another night.. :/

My Rebellious Toddler :)

Today (despite the few incidents I'll tell you about in a minute) was a fairly relaxing day. It consisted of me and Juliette having a lazy, lay-around type of day due to the rain. I didn't mind doing nothing, but of course it made Juliette a little stir crazy!!

At 3am last night the rug-rat decided she was done in her room and gave me no other choice but to bring her into our bed. This was a good decision on my part because I actually got some well deserved sleep!! We woke up at 8am to say good bye to Joe and have some breakfast. Me, not thinking, layed down on her princess couch while she was watching her morning shows. Now my intention was to doze off slightly but still keep my eyes on her. This did not go as planned, I fell asleep and was woken up by her yelling at me, "OMMY...OMMY, EWE!!!!"
("ommy" is pronounced like mommy but minus the first M)
I opened my eyes and told her it was all right. As I closed my eyes again she began to hit my arm repeatedly while saying once again, "OMMY..EWE!!!". This time she got my attention completely and I jumped up. I glanced at the clock and realized I hadn't just dozed off but I had slept for a half hour. Anyone who has kids knows that during this half hour, my toddler could have gotten herself into a world of trouble. I quickly started looking around the house to see if there was anything out of place.

That's when I saw the bag of flour sitting on Juliette's toddler table. I noticed how the bag was still full, but there were traces of flour everywhere. She had found herself a full bag of flour, brought it to her own table and played with it. Although, I must say that from this experience I have realized that I have a GOOD kid!!! Not only was she careful with the FULL bag of flour, but she only played with a small amount. It looked like she had grabbed a hand full and rubbed it all over table, then took another handful and threw it on the floor..lol

I picked up the bag of flour and told Juliette that she was not aloud to touch it anymore. I laughed a little bit at her and asked her if she had fun. Thats when I noticed her diaper was off, so I asked her if she had to use the potty. She started pointing to the kitchen and once again told me, "ewe!!". I followed her to the kitchen and noticed something was on the floor. She got closer to the mystery on the floor and pointed to it once again, reminding me as if I had forgotten, "OMMY EWE!!!" Then it hit me, it was POOP!! I said "ewe" back to Juliette and grabbed a paper towel then picked it up. My little munchkin informed me of some more poop in the dining room and showed me its exact location. lol.

This was a learning experience for me:

1~Don't fall asleep while on duty of toddler watching.

2~My kid isn't that bad if her way of being rebellious while I was sleeping was to play with a small amount of flour and then to poop on the floor..8) At least she didn't poop on the carpet!! And she is such a good girl that she made sure to tell me as soon as she was done pooping. She didn't even play with the poop like I did when I was her age...(thats a whole other story)...

After Juliette's little escapade, we had a really good day. We danced and played with Elmo, drank chocolate milk and watched lots of little kid shows. She had minor meltdowns when she didn't get her way, but generally she got over them quickly.
She occasionally would go to the sliding glass and door and peek out side to see if daddy was home yet~this is one of my favorite things she does...almost like a puppy dog who misses there owner badly. She will stair out of the door and call for Joe many times through out the day. :D

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Update On Our Bedtime Battles:::::::

The Battle tonight went surprisingly AWESOME!!!
We won this battle!!!
whoo hooo!
Juliette took her bath, got into her pajamas & had a snack. When we teamed up on her and brought her in the room, she was clearly upset, but decided to not to put up a huge fight tonight. She yelled at me only once and willingly gave me and Joe a goodnight kiss(usually she fights the goodnight kiss because she knows it means she is going to sleep). Its now 12:24am and she hasn't made a peep in almost 3 hours!!!
YESSsss!!
My plan is working....Me & Joe actually had some quite movie time!!! Even if I have to bring her into our bed at 3am for a few nights, I don't mind because we have our nights back to ourselves and she is in a ROUTINE!!!! (it is possible!!)

Toddler Bedtime Battles!!!

~Day 3 of starting Juliette on a bedtime routine~

Let me start first my explaining the situation: Juliette is our 21 month old toddler. She is our only child and we are doing our best to not let her become over spoiled (this is not as easy as it sounds).

Before she was born, we both agreed that she would NOT be sleeping in our bed. No matter what....Unfortunately it was only about 2 days after we brought her home that she found her way into our bed. And believe it or not, I was not the one who caved. My boyfriend Joe grew so attached to our new baby that in a matter of days she has sweetly found her place in our bed. This went fine for months. If we needed our "alone time", she would be placed in her crib ( which also made its way into our room somehow). As the months went by, it became more & more harder to remove her from the bed. She had us wrapped around her finger....

When Juliette was about 15 months old, we devised a plan to keep her in her own bed. We loaded her bed up with stuffed animals and all of her "friends". This went well for about 3 months until she once again realized that we had taken the control back.

So for the last 2 months, we have been struggling like CRAZY to get her in bed at a decent time and to have as little fight with her as possible. Most of the time we cave in and she comes into our bed. NOT ANYMORE!!! :D

Me and Joe have decided that no matter what, she will take her bath and in bed by 9pm. This time is only temporary until she gets use to it, when she is use to 9pm, we will be bumping it up an hour!! Hopefully in a month or so, our little pumpkin-turned-monster will climb into her bed with no fights, no kicking and no loud screams for me or Joe. Its hard to refuse your 21 month old daughter when she screams for "Omie & Daddy" and sounds like she is in severe pain. We are getting over the initial, "oh ok, lets bring her to bed...poor thing". Instead we are now saying to each other, "Yes!!! We are going to have the control back!!"

Tonight has only been the third night of this new routine but, so far we have survived. Last night was the worst. She woke up at 2am and somehow managed to make me stay in her room with her. The only problem was that she decided she had gotten enough sleep and wanted to stay up. She stayed up for the REST of the night and only napped from 9-12 the next morning(today).

It is now midnight and she has woken up 3 times already, begging me with her tear filled eyes to come in our bed. I keep telling her it will be aright and putting her back in her bed. I should get some sleep before she decides to pull another all-nighter!!!

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Well with that off of my chest, I have time for one more: 8)
This is my very first time Blogging, so I am not sure if I even did it right...but its done..lol
I've always enjoyed writing and sharing my experiences with other people. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I like telling it. I will be using this Blog as a way to free my mind of the mental stress that a toddler will bring!!!
I am sure that from time to time I will also be Blogging about the stresses of relationship and just life in general!!