I took the little angel to Great Clips last night to get her hair cut.  We had to wait about forty minutes for the moment of truth, which was okay because there were some toys and books for her and Cosmopolitan for me.  Usually we go to Shear Madness, because I adore overpaying for a service while surrounded by toys and hair baubles I can't afford, but the little angel was in danger of being confused for a sheepdog, and I just didn't have the energy to haul her down south or make an appointment or anything like that.  Not after learning yesterday at 4:30 that it will cost me $2,214.57 to fix my cleaning lady's car. ARGH.

So there I was, feeling pretty defeated and useless, thinking how we could've installed new carpeting upstairs if I hadn't backed into that lady's damn car, which is probably worth exactly $2,214.57, when one of the "stylists" started using a hairdryer.

The little angel has developed a fear of loud noises in the past six months. When she was wee, she used to love it when I blew the hairdryer on her, making her little red strands dance.  Now she hates it with a passion I usually reserve for George W. Bush.

Anyway, someone fired up a hairdryer, and she looked up, frantic as a deer caught halfway across the highway, the exact same expression on her face that I see on our favorite bunny's when he catches us watching him out the kitchen window.  I got ready to launch into the comfort mantra that I have repeated ever since they put the little angel on my chest when she was thirty seconds old.

But I didn't have to.

She looked around, saw me sitting there reading an article about Dr. McDreamy Patrick Dempsey, and proclaimed to the waiting room, "Mama's here. Mama's here."

And then, I didn't feel so worthless anymore.

The little angel has added a new act to her late-late-late night antics.  This is sort of the appetizer version, the preview of coming attractions.  Yes, the wee one who before only gave us trouble between the hours of 1 and 4 a.m. is now REFUSING TO GO TO BED. 

I was unprepared for it on Friday night, the first night that she has ever refused to go to bed in her twenty-one months.  She faked like it was all going to be okay, then she popped up, stuck her foot in her mouth and beamed at me.  "Hi Mommy!" she said brightly.

I sat there in shock while she struck various cheerleading poses on her bed, auditioning to become a Harajuko Girl. The reality that she was not going to sleep anytime soon began to sink in.  I decided if she was going to party, I was at least going to read (considering my Saturday night and the possibility of a DVD were rapidly fading). 

I cracked her bedroom door and shut the baby gate.  I plopped a pillow against the hard, cold wall and pulled out John Irving's latest, Until I Find You.  I wondered again how long this exercise in parental futility would take. 

Pretty soon she appeared on the other side of the gate, completely unafraid of the darkness behind her.  She had a musical instrument in her hand.  It's a xylophone, and she can never get the little wand to beat on it out of its slot.  "Mama, help," she said, tossing the xylophone over the gate. It narrowly missed my head.

"No, go to sleepy.  Shhh," I said.  This particular method is from The No-Cry Sleep Solution, for those of you who are scoring at home.  I made no eye contact.

Pretty soon she came back, this time with her Cabbage Patch Kid.  The CPK was not wearing her shoes.

"Silly baby.  No shoes," the little angel said, tossing Bethany over the gate at me.  She landed on the xylophone, which made a tired ping.

"Shhh," I said, not making eye contact, trying to read about tattoo artists and not think about that DVD and my wine, which I had foolishly left downstairs.

Next the little angel appeared with Elmo and Fox in Socks. 

"Read, Mommy.  READ BOOKS." 

"No, sleepy.  Shhhh," I said, reading my own book in denial of my wishes for her.

She wasn't bothered by this.  She plopped Elmo down (a feat, considering he is bigger than she is) and started reading the book to him.  "Fox and socks and toxy moxy ONE TWYO TREE FOUR fox and socks and shoes SHOES SHOES foxy blocks FIVE SICKS SEBBEN ATE NOUN TIN!"

It was getting very hard not to laugh. My shoulders were shaking with effort.  I called for back-up.

My beloved and I took turns, every ten minutes, until she started becoming destructive and called that she had a poopy.  I changed her diaper and rocked her with some milk and she FINALLY FELL ASLEEP at 9:45.  This party had started at 8.

Last night I put her down again, this time at 8:15. I use this term loosely, since it was a repeat performance of the night before. This time I tried the rubber-band approach (this is from another book, but I can't remember the name) and put her back in her bed every time she got out. I did this four or five times until I realized she thought it was a game and was screeching in delight each time I put her back.  I left to let my beloved deal with it after about forty minutes.  He got pissed after she knocked over the Diaper Genie and started clearing out the changing table like an extra on Roadhouse.  I was reminded of the episode of Super Nanny when the children climbed the bookshelves when they were supposed to be sleeping. The problem was that I couldn't remember how the nanny handled it.

I went back in again, seized the angel and rocked her again.  She stared blankly at the wall for about fifteen minutes, then passed out.

We're going to be moving back her bedtime, though I'm not sure if this will help. We ran her around Lowe's for about an hour yesterday trying to pick a new wall sconce for her room so that we can actually see to change her diapers when it's dark outside.  I would've thought she'd be exhausted.

But OH, NO.  This one, she's going to be the Queen of the After-Hours in college.

My new year's resolution (well, one of them) was to quit bitching about how the little angel never sleeps. The Good Lord must have been waiting for me to quit bitching, because she has slept more in the month of January than she had in the months of August through December, I swear. I will now most likely be struck dead for the hubris of even typing that. 

Anyway.

It has been a little hit or miss. Tuesday nights seems to be bad.  This is, consequently, the night I teach.  The little angel, she is a lover of both parents. Both parents must be present and paying attention to her at ALL TIMES.  One parent must not go persue independent interests at ANY TIME.  THE WORLD MUST REVOLVE AROUND THE ANGEL. DO YOU HEAR ME IN THE BACK?

One Tuesday night, last Tuesday night to be precise, it was my beloved's turn to deal with her in the wee hours.  He has not yet learned my approach, which is to go in to her room, look through her blankly as though she didn't exist, throw my pillow and the extra, fluffy white comforter on the floor and promptly go back to sleep. I like to model sleeping for her.  I have excellent technique from which she could really learn a lot.

My beloved makes the mistake of making direct eye contact, listening to her requests, etc.  This is how he was pulled into this conversation last Tuesday night.

Little Angel:  "MIL!  MIL!"

Beloved:  "No milk. It's night-time.  Here's your water.  Go to sleepy."

(dramatic pause - head pops back up)

Little Angel:  "READ BOOKS.  DADDY READ."

Beloved:  "No."

(head goes back down - sound of water being slurped and spilled all over bed from sippy cup)

Little Angel:  "CHANGE DIAPER."

This was the request that sort of threw him over the edge.  The little angel typically howls like a hyena if you try to change her diaper, secure in the knowledge that her diaper rash can only be cured by keeping the same sopping diaper in direct contact with her poor, mottled skin at ALL TIMES.  Her requesting a diaper change is akin to George Bush asking the American public for a little feedback. 

After he refused that one, she started crying until finally I yelled at him, hell, it's 4:30 a.m., just take her downstairs and give her the whole damn cow, I don't care, just MAKE THE NOISES GO AWAY.

So I guess, in a way, it worked.

My new year's resolution (well, one of them) was to quit bitching about how the little angel never sleeps. The Good Lord must have been waiting for me to quit bitching, because she has slept more in the month of January than she had in the months of August through December, I swear. I will now most likely be struck dead for the hubris of even typing that. 

Anyway.

It has been a little hit or miss. Tuesday nights seems to be bad.  This is, consequently, the night I teach.  The little angel, she is a lover of both parents. Both parents must be present and paying attention to her at ALL TIMES.  One parent must not go persue independent interests at ANY TIME.  THE WORLD MUST REVOLVE AROUND THE ANGEL. DO YOU HEAR ME IN THE BACK?

One Tuesday night, last Tuesday night to be precise, it was my beloved's turn to deal with her in the wee hours.  He has not yet learned my approach, which is to go in to her room, look through her blankly as though she didn't exist, throw my pillow and the extra, fluffy white comforter on the floor and promptly go back to sleep. I like to model sleeping for her.  I have excellent technique from which she could really learn a lot.

My beloved makes the mistake of making direct eye contact, listening to her requests, etc.  This is how he was pulled into this conversation last Tuesday night.

Little Angel:  "MIL!  MIL!"

Beloved:  "No milk. It's night-time.  Here's your water.  Go to sleepy."

(dramatic pause - head pops back up)

Little Angel:  "READ BOOKS.  DADDY READ."

Beloved:  "No."

(head goes back down - sound of water being slurped and spilled all over bed from sippy cup)

Little Angel:  "CHANGE DIAPER."

This was the request that sort of threw him over the edge.  The little angel typically howls like a hyena if you try to change her diaper, secure in the knowledge that her diaper rash can only be cured by keeping the same sopping diaper in direct contact with her poor, mottled skin at ALL TIMES.  Her requesting a diaper change is akin to George Bush asking the American public for a little feedback. 

After he refused that one, she started crying until finally I yelled at him, hell, it's 4:30 a.m., just take her downstairs and give her the whole damn cow, I don't care, just MAKE THE NOISES GO AWAY.

So I guess, in a way, it worked.

On Sunday night, we had dinner and a playdate with friends.  The little angel and her friend A. were having a grand old time.  So were we.  We were drinking wine, trying to watch the children, trying to discuss normal adult things, and those two activities so do not go together.  I was standing at the kitchen counter looking through the diaper bag when I heard R. say "Oh, oh, oh!" 

I turned around and saw the little angel falling head over heels down the stairs. It was like stop-gap motion, and I, like Will Ferrell in Old School after he's taken an animal tranq to the main artery, fell over myself trying to reach her.

I've always been afraid of the little angel falling down stairs. Long after other friends abandoned their kid gates, we've kept ours up at the top AND the bottom of our lethal hardwood staircase.  Since we've had the gates up, I've actually fallen down the stairs twice in my socks. They are slippery. They are HARD.  I had a nasty bruise each time after I fell, and I sort of have this Million Dollar Baby nightmare that she'll fall down, hit her neck the wrong way, become a quadraplegic and bite through her tiny tongue in a hospital bed after I try to convince her to go to junior college instead of boxing ever again.

So anyway, she fell down a flight of carpeted stairs.  She didn't break her neck. She actually sort of landed on her feet.  There was an adult very close to where she landed.  I rushed over, trying to contain the roiling panic threatening to give me a heart attack, and scooped her up, covering her with lipstick kisses. 

She cried for about thirty seconds, then noticed A. was back to the toys and demanded "DOWN!"  I tried very hard to be cool. My fear had finally been realized.  And she did live through it.  After that, in fact, we spent several trips up and down the stairs teaching her to go down backwards (something that's been hard to teach on hard, pointy hardwood stairs), and she thought that was great fun.  I think it was Vickie Iovine who wrote in one of the Girlfriend's Guide books that God gives you a free one.  I think that was ours.

The little angel is scared of loud noises. She has been for several months. Unfortunately for her, we live right in the middle of Kansas City, two blocks from two very busy, four-lane streets and one block from a fire station. I can see the firefighters playing basketball during the day from my home office.  They are called into action frequently.  I used to not really mind, because I thought HEY! if our house catches on fire, THEY WILL SMELL IT AND SAVE US.  But now...the noises.

We also live in Kansas City: Transportation Hub, home of lots of planes, trains and automobiles.  We are on the flight path for the downtown airport. We are close enough to the urban core to get a lot of searchlight visits from the Ghetto Bird.  Our teenage pirate neighbor just got his license.  The pot-smokers next door have pizza delivery at all hours of the day and night and listen to the Grateful Dead at top volume (this oxymoron I don't understand).  In other words, it's a really shitty place to live if you are twenty-one months old and afraid of loud,  unexplained sounds.

Last night we were eating our dinner when we heard a train whistle.  The little angel developed an intense love of Thomas the Tank Engine after a party with the crowd from Waddler B, so we thought maybe we'd use him as a bridge to the conversation about Unexplained Noises.

Little Angel:  "What?  WHAT?"

Me:  "That's just a train, honey.  You know?  Choo choo?"

Beloved:  "Toot TOOT!" (stuffs food in mouth, finished with the conversation)

Me:  "You know, THOMAS is a train. You love Thomas!"

LA: "Thomas?"  (looks warily around kitchen for Thomas)

Me:  "The train is outside, though. Far, far away. He's not Thomas, but he's like, you know, Thomas' roommate's cousin.  He knows Thomas sort of socially."

LA:  "Thomas - TOOT?"  (looks frightened)

I pause to think this maybe wasn't good. Is she going to be afraid of Thomas now?  DRAT.

Me:  "Sometimes everyone goes TOOT.  Eat your yogurt."

I type to keep myself from falling asleep face-first on the monitor. The little angel and I played "in the bed, out of the bed" last night from 2:30 to 4:30 a.m.  This is called "the rubber band technique" by one of the 800 sleep experts whose books I have read and thrown across the room in the past six months. I don't remember which one. It most reminded me of a quote from an obscure '80s Justine Bateman film, Satisfaction. They were living in their van.  Or something. And one of the ditzy girl-band members kept saying "In the van, out of the van, in the van, out of the van."  That's sort of how I felt after putting the little angel back in bed for the 21st time with her protesting, "No, Mama rocking. Mama rocking!" and stamping her little feet.  I actually passed out from exhaustion face-first on the carpet after she stopped making noise.  I had fully intended to go back to bed, but woke up at 7 in a puddle of my own drool with the little angel dancing on my poor, twisted back. 

But enough about that.

2006 Resolutions

1) Stop talking so much about how my child doesn't sleep. Or how she hasn't slept through the night more than three times since August. The Internet doesn't care.  My own family is growing bored with it. I'm so bored with myself talking about it, I could just die.  The more comatose I become, the more likely it is I will stop taking the energy to talk at all, so this should be pretty easy.

2) Publish more.  Print stuff, that is.  I make this one every year, but dammit, I'm serious now. I was on a roll while getting my master's degree in fiction, but then the child emerged. I'm with Alice on that one.  And it has to be something in addition to the article on picking out your own wedding ring that I am working on. This has to be something of the poem-and-short-story variety.

3) Recarpet my upstairs and get rid of the damn lead-paint-containing door that goes to the playroom. The door haunts my sleep and drives me insane every time I look at it.

4) Finally remove all the leaves from my yard before the trees start budding again.

5) Buy cooler clothes when I once again get access to my own clothing budget.  I figure the more I buy the little angel on Ebay, the more money there will be for me. I am an awesome mother in this way.  She has so overspent on her distribution of the resources, anyway. I mean, she did just get a new bed and everything.

6) Extend and keep more social invitations.  I spend too dang much time trying to catch extra sleep since I don't do any of THAT at night.  It has totally made me an irritable hermit.  But there I go talking about the "s" word again.

7) Swear more when not in the little angel's earshot.  I can't give up swearing. I love to swear. I just need to change the location and do it more in the bathroom or something.

8) Find some nature.  I realized when I was at my parents' house so much over the holidays that I really miss hiking in the woods. I would like to hike in the woods again. I wonder where they might be located in Kansas City?

9) Cook something that doesn't come microwavable in a bag at least once a week. When I'm not trying to sleep.

10) Did I mention I want to stop talking about, reading about, and thinking about sleep?  Is there some kind of Sleep CQ patch I could look into it that would administer small doses of REM to me during the day?  Man, if I could harness THAT invention, I could quit my job right now. I would be the hero of parents and rock stars everywhere.

I think that's it for now.

The little angel's sleeping average has dropped to 32% since the week before Thanksgiving.  Every night this week she has broken my will be waking up between 1:30 and 4 and refusing to go back to sleep. Without my back-up pinch hitter, otherwise known as my husband, I don't have the will to stay up all night every night with no chance of a nap and a hectic corporate job to deal with during the day.  We've ended up on the couch a lot.

I don't know what happened. It was all going so well with the big-girl bed.  The enticement of Elmo, the blinky-light shoes, the new stickers we got at Target last night, nothing works.  When my beloved returns, there is going to be a showdown SuperNanny-style.  But for now, I'm just...really tired.

Wah.

The little angel was again the perp today.  Her big, pointy teeth were her weapons of choice. 

What We Wish She'd Say Tomorrow:

Dearest Baby M.,

I wish to extend my most sincere apologies for leaning in to you yesterday so tenderly the teachers thought I was giving you a hug, then taking a huge chomp out of your pudgy baby face.  After Mama had a long talk with me over my Elmo coloring book, I realize the errors of my ways and feel deeply ashamed.  I realize now that friends are of utmost importance, right up there with mommies and daddies and kitties.  If there is anything I can do to rectify the harm to our friendship, please allow me to do so.  I also promise to send back all the dirty money donated to my last campaign.

Leave long and prosper,

Little Angel

What She Will Really Say Tomorrow At Waddler B:

Sucker.