Emma at 26 months: Bedtime blues

Wow, I need to go back and read my posts from Evan at this age to see if I have simply forgotten, or repressed, this age with him.  For some reason when I think back on Evan as a 2-year-old I don't recall it being *that* terrible.  But, so far Emma is really giving us plenty of 2-year-old-trouble.  She has really gotten down the defiance, the flip flop emotional indecisiveness, and she is smart enough to not fall for some of the tactics that are supposed to help.  For example, the idea that giving them choices will help them feel more in control.  The idea is to give the child two choices, though, as not to overwhelm them or give them too many options.  Ideally, both choices should result in the same ultimate outcome if it can be arranged that way (and on the fly coming up with choices to offer, I promise that this doesn't always happen as ideally).  However, Emma has realized she can respond to my two choice options with a "neither".  She doesn't say the word "neither" yet, but she does say "no", or ignore my choice options and continue doing what she wants to do.

Miss Independent

Take bedtime, for example.  Oh my, it has gotten challenging, to say the least!  Just a few mere months ago she was still going to bed as easy as cake.  Now it's the complete opposite.  She refuses to get into her pajamas, refuses to let us help her brush her teeth, refuses to get in her sleep sack, refuses to go to sleep, etc.  She wants her door left open, she wants another book to be read, she wants her drink, she doesn't want her drink, but she wants her drink.  Ahhh!  It is pretty infuriating when she cries that she wants something (such as said drink) and then you get it for her, only to have her push it away and say "no" when you give it to her.  Then as you walk away with it, she cries for it again, and so forth.  As for not getting into her pajamas (which also sometimes is not wanting to get dressed in the morning too. As an example she went to daycare in her pajama shirt today! Granted, it did have Else and Ana on it, so she didn't want to part with them, plus it did kind of match the rest of the outfit, but that was a battle we decided not to fight), I try to give her two to choose from.  She flip flops over which she wants, never really deciding.  And then she won't get into either anyway.  So I usually try to pull some of her clothes off her as she fights me or runs away.  But then I have a naked baby who still fights and prevents me from getting her pajamas on.  So after awhile of fighting with her defiance, I give her the choice to get into her pajamas or go into her crib for bed right then.  She doesn't choose of course, and so I find myself putting her in her crib, leaving the room, and then hearing her cry.  When I come back to ask if she's ready to get into her pajamas, she says no, so I leave again and she cries again.  (sigh)  I think this could explain why John and I are beat after the kids bedtime and haven't been able to muster doing anything else in what used to be our grown up time after the kids went to bed. (This includes me blogging...one of my excuses for being so behind!)

She does say the cutest things now (even sometimes when she's being defiant or emotional, some really cute things come out of her mouth).  For example, one recent evening when I had put her in her crib because she refused to get ready for bed, she started crying as I left of course.  I came back in and asked her "What do you want me to do?", and she stopped crying and replied with a sly grin, "Nothing."  Ain't that the truth!?  She'd love for me to just let her do whatever she wants to and avoid bedtime and any other thing she doesn't want to do altogether.

Anyway, there have been a few nights where she's up until 10pm or so, just in her crib talking, singing, crying, playing, whatever she can do to avoid going to sleep.  We've been wondering if her afternoon naps are causing her to not be as tired at bedtime, but I'm certainly not ready to give those up yet!  Not that she won't be done with naps soon; they are sometimes just as hard to get her to go down for as bedtime is.

While these moments are fresh in my memory (because it is after their bedtime now after all), there are still plenty of other good and super cute stories to share of Emma at this age.  However, I'm beat and already starting to fall asleep, so stay tuned, for another post about Emma at 26 months!