We Didn't Mean To Laugh

Setting:  2:30 a.m., Little Angel's Lair

According to my spreadsheet, the little angel has not slept through the night (meaning: 8 p.m. until 5 a.m.) since last Thursday.  She and I have both had a wicked bad cold, and she also seems to be the victim of some nasty teething.

But then there's this other problem of the Diva Effect.  The little angel never used to be a diva.  She used to be quite agreeable. Then a few things happened...she turned twenty months old, and the "babies" came into Waddler B.

The children in Waddler B graduate to the two-year-old room when they, well, turn two.  The little angel's friend J. is getting ready to move over, much to his mother's relief.  You see, Baby M., Baby S. and Baby R. have entered Waddler B, and they are terrorizing the place with their howling, refusal to understand the word "no" and other annoying-to-toddlers baby behavior.

To be fair, it's not their fault.  When the little angel and her posse entered Waddler B, the little angel couldn't even walk. They all still drank from bottles and took naps in cribs. So this expectation that these new, walking, talking babies should act any older than they already are is completely unfair.

Not that the toddlers care about this.  Mama J. told me that J. sits around at home saying "NO BABIES!"  He refuses to read books about babies.  He hates them.  I wonder if all the disruption is fueling the little angel's need to completely control her surroundings at home.

Or, it could just be That Time.  That Time When The Angel Becomes Possessed.

Anyway, after all that backstory, back to the lair.

The little angel usually sleeps through until at LEAST 3:30.  We already got to the point where we consider 5 a.m. "long enough" to sleep in the crib.  It started to creep toward 4 this week, since she had a bad cold and was having trouble breathing and such.  However, 2:30 is NOT ACCEPTABLE, so we went in to see what was causing the problem.

The little angel didn't seem to be in any kind of pain, but we gave her some Oragel just in case.  She wanted to get out of the crib.  We decided it was too early for that, but since she has enough phlegm to vomit at the drop of a hat, we decided to stay in the room to make sure we could catch the vomit before it sullied the sheets, if she decided to go that route.  She didn't, thank goodness.

What she did do:

• Dance around the crib in anger, tossing out Gray Kitty, Orange Fishy, Pink Bear, White Bear, Green Frog and Yellow Blanket.  Each time she tossed something, she would scream "NYO!"
• Throw herself on her mattress and beat her tiny feet against the sheets, howling all the while.
• Kick the slats of her crib in frustration: rat-a-tat-tat.  "NYO!"  This part was actually pretty funny - my beloved and I tried not to make eye contact so we wouldn't outwardly laugh at her.
• Stand back up to see if we were still watching.  At this point, we were tired. We laid down on the floor and went to sleep for a while.
• Rinse, lather and repeat.

This went on for about forty minutes until she went to sleep herself and we crawled back to bed, feeling oddly triumphant, considering we really weren't.  We didn't pick her up AND she didn't vomit. This is a major accomplishment lately.