The Great Escape

So a few nights ago Lydia was having trouble going to sleep.  I should mention that Lydia never has trouble going to sleep: a book, a few minutes of gentle pat, and boom, she’s all, “Noo night, Mommy.  Sweet dreams.  Don’t bee bite. See you in the morning.”  (chalk “Don’t bee bite” up to the list of words and expressions I can’t bring myself to correct.  The list also includes “moppy show you” instead of “let me show you,” “tabamas” for pajamas, “rumberband,” etc.)

So we’re sitting in the office watching the start of Breaking Bad and half-listening to her crying and shouting “Mommy Mommy Mommy” when all of a sudden the “Mommy Mommy” gets significantly louder, and there she is in the doorway.  Those of you who have older children may not remember how utterly disconcerting it is to suddenly SEE your toddler in the flesh when for her entire life, once she went to bed, she’s never been anywhere else.  Well, let me remind you.  It’s so discombobulating it must be like those theatre-goers felt the first time they broke down the fourth wall. Shit just got real, yo.

So we put her back in the crib, and five minutes later, out she clambers.  We mutter a few expletives, pull her mattress out of the crib and set it up on the floor so that she doesn’t kill herself, rig up a new configuration of safety gates so that she only has access to her room and the adjacent bathroom, do an extended 20 or 30 minutes of patting, book reading, etc., and head upstairs.  Not five minutes later, we hear her door open and then the unmistakeable sound of a toddler scaling a safety gate like a monkey.  By the time Ryan has gotten downstairs, she’s gotten her stool from the kitchen, carried it to the other safety gate, and is attempting to use it to scale that gate and get to us–at least, I assume she was trying to get to us.  Perhaps she saw it as her one chance to make it to freedom.

This moment–the darkened hallway, the small white stool, the toddler with one chubby leg thrown over the pet gate we use because we were too cheap to buy another real childproofing gate–marked a very sad turning point in our parenting lives.  As our eyes met hers, we knew we could no longer rely on each evening being free for us to do whatever we want.  Now, she could come to us. She could find us, asleep or awake.  She could demand things from us, even at night.  It was, frankly, horrifying.

Cocker spaniel, toddler...what's the difference?

The next 48 hours did nothing to lessen our fears.  The only way she’d even stay in her room was if one of us was in there with her, and even then she tossed and turned on that mattress like the world’s worst insomniac, while one of us sat hostage in her armchair nearby.  After a good 45 minutes or so, I’d try to move, only to see her little head pop up like a prairie dog as she said, “Mommy, STAY DERE.”  

The night was endless.  We patted, we sang, we cajoled, we bribed, we yelled, we ignored, we entreated.  Nothing worked.  For two nights in a row none of us slept more than a few hours.

She's staring...why won't she stop staring?

And so, on the advice of some very savvy parents, we ordered ourselves what has turned out to be The Greatest Gift Of All:  The Tots In Mind Cozy Crib Tent II.  Thanks to the wonder of Amazon Prime, it arrived today in time for nap time.  I was prescient enough to spend the entire morning talking about it: “Lydia, you’re getting a PRESENT today!  It’s a TENT! For your CRIB!  It’s a BIG GIRL TENT and it’s SO FUN!” The ruse worked, and even though it took me thirty-five looooong minutes to set it up, she maintained her enthusiasm for it.  “Look look look, Mommy!  A zipper! I going to go in the tent and read a book and gentle pat and then I going to go to sleep and Mommy is going to zip me up and then I’m going to go to sleep for a long long time and Mommy going to sit in the chair!”  And all of it–except for me sitting in her chair, thank God–has come to pass.  I got her set up in there for her nap, and that’s where she is, caged in her little toddler shelter, much like Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.  And you know what? I feel GREAT.  She’s sleeping soundly for the first time in days, and I’m no longer mistaking the sound of passing geese as her crying out for me as she plunges to her death down our staircase in the dark.  If it lasts for a month or even just a couple of days, it will have been worth it.  It turns out we just weren’t quite ready to be big girls yet.

Why does the Tots In Mind model look so feral?