A Reprive and a Regression

Finally, the weather has turned pleasant for a bit, so Hubby and I have been subscribing to the throw them outside school of parenting. Both kiddos outside as much as humanly possible, burning off energy at an alarming rate, in the hopes that the boy will stop assaulting random kids and the girl will start sleeping through the night again.

And the boy has been doing extremely well, but we simply cannot keep up this level of activity - he has to go back to school next week! We are building up a bank of days when he has proved to himself that he can behave in the way we need him to, so that is something. Lets see if it continues when he's back in school.

The girl's issue has become clear - she's cutting her two upper eye teeth, and apparently that is what has been waking her in the middle of the night. And knowing that, I am much more able to deal with her waking, crying and refusing to go back to bed. Hubby, on the other hand, doesn't seem to much care why she's awake, so much as just wants her to go back to sleep so he (and I) can sleep.

She has also developed a nasty habit of waiting until the minute our heads hit the pillow to wake up and start *screaming her head off*. For an average of *90 minutes* per night.

This, of course, lead to a knock down drag out battle of wills between Hubby and I at 2 am the other night. Apparently, I was directed to go look this shit up, because "what we're doing isn't working." My main problem with that? Hubby has stopped following the bloody sleep plan!

When the boy as about 11 months old, Hubby and I were having a terrible time with him, not going to sleep easy, not staying asleep overnight, etc. And Mat leave was slowly ticking down. So I did a bunch of research and arrived at a modified Ferber method (Cry It Out with staggered soothing breaks) which we started using. Took three night, worked like a charm, and the boy still sleeps like a brick.

So around 9 months old, we implemented it with the girl. One of the main tenants is to not interact with the child when you want them to sleep - No Chatting!

And Hubby is *incapable* of not chatting with the girl in the middle of the night. No matter how many times I argue it with him, he doesn't see the harm. And this has been an ongoing argument in the background for the last year or so.

Hence, 90 minutes of screaming "daddy" in the middle of the night.

So now, in addition to violent aggressive boy, we have sleep strike girl. Nice.

Because that's *just* what we needed.

The Mommy

Karma's a bitch.

So, here's the deal.

Hubby and I are apparently raising the spawn of Satan.

And here's why that's all about karma.

When Hubby and I were first dating, he met my then 2 year old niece. She was the first child in the family for a pretty long stretch, and she was rather remarkably spoiled. And just a few months prior to Hubby meeting her, her baby sister was born, causing all sorts of trouble for my sister. After an afternoon with her, Hubby dubs her the spawn of Satan. She was a pretty good piece of work at that age, but most kids I know are.

Fast forward 10 years, and Hubby and I have two little spawns of our own. One, the boy, is 5. He is the devil himself.

He's always been a bit of trouble - pretty much from day one, he had a strong personality. Now, he has a strong body to support it, and has taken to throwing punches when he's angry. Or kicking. Particularly about the head.

I've spent pretty much the last two weeks in the Principal's office with him. I'm losing what little patience I normally have here.

The annoying thing is the boy *knows the difference*. In the past, he would occasionally act out, but he was a toddler, he didn't know better. I could pretty easily distract him away from bad behaviour, or talk it through with him.

Not anymore.

So basically, I'm feeling like a complete failure as a parent. And I'm getting frustrated with Hubby for not being perfectly consistent too. Not that I'm overly consistent, but no one said I was acting rationally here.

And add to that the perfect storm of being an Irish-Canadian catholic mother, and I feel like it's all my fault. It's the trifecta of guilt.

So here's the plan - as we try a new behavioural modification system on both kids (the girl is 19 months, so a little young, but we're going to see if we can improve her screaming at the top of her lungs for no apparent reason thing), I'm going to share here. And vent. There will likely be a lot of venting. One of the tenants of the plan is to not let the kids see that they are causing you to lose your cool. That should be fun. Now all I have to do is get Hubby to also follow it! And lord knows, neither Hubby nor I are known for our lack of temper.

Tune in tomorrow to have the new plan explained in some sort of reasonable manner. It's supposed to be remarkable simple, and reportedly very effective, so long as it is consistently implemented.

The Mommy.