July 21

So, let's talk about how my daughter, who has been an awesome sleeper for the past two years, is now refusing to sleep.

Today at naptime, she cried for 60 minutes and slept for 0 minutes. After the first 10 minutes, I went upstairs to check on her. She said she needed to go potty, so I took her to the bathroom and she went. I put her back in bed, and she started crying as soon as I started to leave the room. I tucked her in one last time, then left with her still crying. Screaming is really a more accurate term.

She continued screaming. Daniel eventually came home from work at the 45 minute point to see if he could get her to calm down and sleep. (She woke up at 5:30 this morning after a late night last night. She was very, very tired...probably overtired...and we knew she really needed to sleep).

Daniel went up to discover that she had peed the bed. He cleaned her and the bed up and tried to put her back to sleep, but he didn't have any luck. She continued to scream.

Finally, we gave in and let her get up. When we got her up, we discovered that she had peed the bed again! I am pretty sure the peeing was a result of the tantrum or just her being defiant because she was mad at us. Very frustrating!! I hated giving in to her tantrum, but we couldn't let her keep crying all day long!!
After Daniel went back to work, Audrey ended up falling asleep on the couch! She has never done that before for us. Definite proof that she was exhausted and needed a nap.

Naptimes have sometimes been difficult lately, so it didn't surprise me too much to have her fight us on her nap. Bedtime has been going smoothly for a long time, so even after the rough nap today, I expected her to go right to sleep tonight.

I was at church tearing down after VBS. So Daniel had both of the girls at bedtime by himself, which is not an easy task. All seemed to be going well, until Daniel got up to leave her room. And the screaming resumed.

I was just talking to someone tonight about how Audrey sometimes screams at bedtime, but she doesn't get out of bed. Plus, the door to her room is really hard to open, so she doesn't know how to open it. So at least we don't have to deal with her getting out of bed and out of her room.

At least we didn't have to deal with it until tonight.

Audrey not only figured out that she was capable of getting up out of bed by herself, she also figured out that she can open the door all by herself. So that's what she did. Over and over and over again.

Daniel eventually called me to come home and help. We employed Super Nanny's technique of putting her straight back in bed every time she got up. It took a while, but eventually it worked. She quieted down at 10:00, about 1 1/2 hours after the whole bedtime routine began.

I'm trying to muster up some sympathy for Audrey. She has been separated from us a lot lately--first with Isla's birth, then recently with her trip to Daniel's parents, and VBS this week has kept me busy and away from her. But really it is hard for me to feel bad for her. I am mostly just extremely frustrated and completely exhausted. With a baby that is still up a couple of times a night and a crazy week of VBS, this is not good timing for Audrey to give us a hard time.

I read this blog post today, which was a good reminder that all of this is just a phase. It will not last forever! And I"m hoping it won't last much longer than today. =)