Bedtime

Since the long Christmas break, Elle's bedtime routine had become a long hauling hours of playtime on our big bed before falling asleep. Bedtime always ending up past midnight. It's funny that no matter how sleepy or tired she is, the moment we put her down on our big bed, her eyes spark up instantly and then she's in the roll of having fun. It makes me feel like she pretends to be sleepy so to get in her way to her favorite playground. We let her wear herself off on our big bed and then carry her back to the crib when she starts dozing off. A lot of times that we're already so beat and fell asleep, whereas she's still in full swing of twirling her body around, standing against the wall, banging and licking it, and hands all over our faces.

We put a stop to this restless nighty-nite-time the night she fell off to the floor, for the third time, by pushing against the pillow fort we built around the bed. Third time's a charm, eh? She was grounded by her daddy in her cage. She wailed and screamed, and no a soul dared to bail her out.

So, her daddy's new approach becomes rocking her to sleep. He is a real rocker. I can't do better than him simply because I don't have much patience and I afraid she'll hook up with rocking. We gotta endure little hands brushing all over our face, hand pulling our mouth and nose, fingers poking into our mouth, hair playing, chest scratching and her other little silly habits, just to get her to close her eyes. Just because we are the only fun she can have while she's in our arms. It's not an easy task. So, I cheat, for the sanity of both of us. I put her down in her crib right after I calm her down. The next 20 minutes is all screaming, kicking, pulling up and sitting down, for a bad day. On a good day, she goes into her dreamland after a few thumb-sucking. On a mischievous day, she tries to pull every possible things on top of the dresser next to the crib and makes as much destruction as possible within her reach. The bright yellow warning labels on the baby monitor's power cord is her fave.

Last night was a disaster. She was calm when I put her into the crib. It's a good sign that no noise coming out from her room for 10 minutes. Then, there's a bit of grunting and groaning. I ignored them, but kept my ear to the ground. Suddenly, an unusual growling noise spiked up from the room. I rushed into the room and saw her drenched in her own runny poop and massive of poops all over the crib. I was like standing at the scene of a crime, except there's no blood but plenty of poops, and the smell was horrible. That's the first time I ever heard Elle made such a traumatic, trembling noises. She looked like she was in a tremendous shock that she yelled her chest out. A freak-out baby covered with poop and the poopy crib almost collapsed my world. Somehow, I gathered strength from out of nowhere and pulled myself together to deal with this shit. It's tough and I'm glad when it's over.

I can't believe I gotta deal with so many poops fears factor in this new year.