Mirror Mirror

On Friday, Beth at daycare told me that Quinn has been taking food off of other people's plates. She did it at my friend Kim's house recently too. It was Asa's second birthday party and Quinn and Asa were sitting at a little table together, mostly staring at each other while they ate their snacks. All of a sudden, Quinn got up and walked over to Asa. I thought, "how sweet, she's going to give her a hug." Quinn looked Asa in the eye and then grabbed her crackers and walked away.  I am so embarrassed by this behavior. I keep trying to figure out, why is it that my kid is such a pig? While Quinn is in her high chair, smearing hummus all over her face, I find myself thinking about how much work I have to do to domesticate her, and then, without thinking, I reach down and snag a piece of uneaten avocado off of her plate. Oh. My. God...

Now, picture this: Sam has just climbed up and over a huge brush pile dragging a giant tarp in an attempt to keep the pile dry until he can get around to burning it. He stumbles a couple of times, a leg pops through the branches here and there…it's not a graceful process. And, just as he makes it back to solid ground and looks up at the pile, now covered by blue plastic, a gust of wind lifts the whole tarp in a graceful ripple and it goes sailing through the air, landing somewhere nearby. He loses it. Quinn and I are standing 50 feet away, looking in the garden for signs of the seeds we've planted. The wind, fortunately, is quite loud. My hope is that she can't hear her father screaming, arms outstretched to the sky, middle fingers leading the way, "Fuck You, Wind! Fuck You!" His rant at the heavens lasts at least two minutes.

This morning, I glance over at Quinn in time to see her try to step into her yellow rain boot. Her toe hits the top of the boot and knocks it over. AHHHHHHHHHHHH! Immediately she is screaming, stomping her feet and flailing her arms. In the midst of the screaming, I'm certain I hear, "Fuck You, Yellow Rain Boot! Fuck You!"

When you think about reproducing with someone, there's usually a lot of sappy, "I hope the baby has your eyes" talk. But I wonder if it ever dawns on people to talk about what they hope won't be reproduced.

Sam's temper is a curious thing. Circumstances that I believe merit real and unmitigated fury don't seem to bother him in the slightest. He goes to that other place and it all just rolls off his back. On the other hand, he will utterly lose it over some little frustration that could easily be solved with a deep breath and some problem solving. Being so polar opposite in our reactions to stress comes in handy sometimes; we can take turns talking each other off the ledge. But, I will admit to being a bit stunned during those moments when I've had to step in and say things like, "Sam, maybe you should set down the hammer."

With Quinn's temper tantrums, I've decided not to swoop in and solve the problems for her (I'm sure Sam wishes he had the same luxury), in hopes that she'll learn to take a deep breath and find a new strategy. Nevertheless, I find that it's still easy to get muddled in my thinking. The screaming, the lack of sleep, the lack of sleep (did I say that already?) these things mess me up.  And, periodically when I'm feeling confused and I've lost sight of the long-term view, and I'm stuck in the right now, as in I must make the screaming stop, right now, periodically I resort to books, which I'm not convinced is an entirely good idea. 

I recently borrowed the popular new Bringing Up Bebe  from my French sister-in-law Geraldine. When she was previewing some of the key concepts in the book for me, I thought, "Yeah, that's all familiar…that's how I was raised too." I ate what my mother cooked for dinner. I greeted guests who came to the house. I waited for things. From Geraldine's preview, none of it seemed that foreign, but still I thought I should read it…just in case—just in case there was some obvious solution to the grocery store temper tantrums, or the high chair acrobatics, or the "No! No! No!" response to every food but raisins. Or, if there was some secret to solving the night wake-ups that are no longer infrequent and now involve her sleeping in our bed anytime from 2 a.m. on, every single night, for the past month. 

You may or may not recall the first bout of co-sleeping we had last September when Quinn had her first ever ear infection. We brought her to our bed only after multiple nights of sitting upright in the chair with her while she slept, and more nights of trying to let her "cry it out." You may or may not recall that after long hours of crying, Quinn never managed to get "it" out, whatever "it" was. And, you may or may not recall that we went 10 hours at a go, more than once, with Quinn screaming on-and-off the whole entire time…but we do. And we also have a distinct memory of the shame of feeling negligent, cruel and, at the same time, defeated.

Well, she's back at it. She wakes up, she screams, and then she screams some more. I know, having endured those 10-hour nights, that she won't get it out. And so now, in this latest round of sleeplessness, we haven't even bothered to let her "cry it out" because it seems so laughable, and because we never feel like we can afford a sleepless night. But, still, we know we need to regain some sanity soon.

If any of this could be solved, well, then reading this new book would certainly be worthwhile, wouldn't it? Chapter 3 in Bringing Up Bebe is called "Doing Her Nights." The author talks at length about the French habit of "pausing" before going to the crying baby in order to let the baby return to sleep on her own. Nice idea. She then talks about the unfortunate reality that sometimes pausing doesn’t work and parents need to resort to a more firm approach to "sleep training." Even though I've read all this before, for some reason yesterday I kept reading and, I'll be honest, I wish I hadn't, because now, in the middle of the night when Quinn has woken us up, convinced us it's hopeless and tricked us into bringing her to our bed, taken over my pillow and started snoring along with Darth Vader next to her, now I'll have this little gem from Druckerman's book to mull over, while I lie there staring at the clock:

"At nine months old, she still wakes up every night at around two a.m. So we brace ourselves to let her cry it out. On the first night, she cries for twelve minutes. (I clutch Simon's arm and cry, too). Then she goes back to sleep. The next night she cries for five minutes. On the third night, Simon and I both wake up to silence at two a.m. 'I think she was waking up for us,' Simon says. 'She thought that we needed her to do it.' Then we go back to sleep."

Twelve minutes?! Merde! 

What I need Quinn to do is to sleep, or at least learn how to go downstairs and make coffee in the morning. Either one of those two things would be great. And, in the meantime, if you have any advice on when I should ignore her pleas and when I should listen, that would be great too. Because Quinn just handed me a handful of clean diapers and I ignored her. Then, she peed on the rug. If only I was making this stuff up.