Do you hear that? It's silence. Absolute silence. And it's
about time!
 |
| ...Within the sound of silence |
Obviously, any parent struggles with the constant cacophony
of sounds emanating from every last crevasse of their home as their children
play. That's not the cause for my relief though. Obviously, I've become quite
accustomed to the constant barrage of "Daddy, will you play with me?"
accompanied by toys covering every square inch of our carpet. What I'll never get
used to though is the cranky cries associated with one very unhappy baby in the
midst of his own personal sleep strike.
This week has actually been full of new nighttime routines
for our little guy. For one, we made the long-awaited decision to begin weaning
him at nights. We didn't come to that decision selfishly though. Well, maybe a
little. It was mostly made since Ethan really doesn't eat during the night
anymore. Instead, he just uses it to soothe himself for a couple of minutes
before falling back asleep. As a result, nighttimes have morphed into a mostly
dad-only zone. I'll go in and hold Ethan until he finally falls back asleep.
Then I'll transition him back to his crib and happily skip (not really) back to
my own bed. Things had largely been going great until Ethan decided last night
that it was time to rebel.
Beginning at 10:30 last night, Ethan embarked on a quest to
wake up in tears approximately once every two hours. At first, I was more than
willing to help him out. As the night went on though, my willingness began to
wane. In fact, it really hit its peak around 4:00 am when my tried-and-true
formula didn't work. No matter how often I tried, I couldn't get Ethan
transferred from my arms to his crib without the tears following suit. Bethany
even took a shift before things finally resulted in me finishing the night
co-sleeping alongside my son.
While one would think the issues would decrease during
daylight hours, that would be very wrong. Instead, Ethan's idea of sleep
largely consisted of yawning and taking occasional breaks to just lie on the
floor in the fetal position. Whenever I'd make the attempt to move him to his
crib though, it would be met with excessive screaming. Finally, after five
tries throughout the morning, I decided it was time to give up and just wait
for him to succumb to exhaustion. Before that could happen, it was first time
for lunch.
Since I was pretty much mentally done with everything by
this moment in time, it goes without saying that I was preparing an easy lunch.
On this day, the menu would consists of leftover steak fried rice, banana, and
a mixture of corn and peas. Obviously, Ellie and I were partaking exclusively
of the fried rice and bananas while Ethan enjoyed a mix of all three. Even
though I started off lunch kind of ticked off at Ethan, he wouldn't let me stay
that way even though I really wanted to. For one thing, it's really cute to watch
him eat and hear him continually beg for more. The main reason though was due
to the new trick he learned today.
As we began to finish up with lunch, Ethan still had a
decent amount of corn and peas left on his tray. Normally, he'll just finish up
anything regardless of whether he's actually full or not. Today though, Ethan
decided to clean his tray in a different way.
Grasping a kernel of corn between his thumb and pointer
finger, Ethan held his tiny hand aloft in the direction of my mouth. When I
didn't respond initially, Ethan's reaction was to begin saying his favorite
"word", "Dada", over and over again. Actually, I can't
guarantee that's what he is saying; it is what it sounds like though.
After several increasingly more passionate echoes of
"Dada" from my son, I leaned forward and opened my mouth where Ethan
happily deposited the kernel of corn in my mouth. At this point, I figured we
were done. Ethan thought otherwise as we repeated the process until every last
piece of corn or pea had disappeared from his tray. Then, and only then, could
we call lunch complete.
With that, I decided the time had finally come for Ethan to
take a nap even if he had to epically cry in the process. I quickly prepared a
bottle and took Ethan to his bedroom. Once there, we sat on the full-size bed
together as I fed him a bottle. Finally, once the last drop of milk had drained
from the bottle, he began to cry and rub his eyes repeatedly. I knew the time
had finally come. I popped a pacifier in Ethan's mouth and gave him two more,
one for each hand. Then, I gingerly backed out the open door and quietly closed
it behind me. When I didn't hear any crying, I knew that I had finally achieved
success.
The lone question remaining is if my success was because
Ethan was finally full and relaxed or if he could rest easy knowing that his
daddy was full and relaxed as well. Who knows which is the right answer in his
little mind. #DaddyWrite
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