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Wonderful, Magical Music

Eureka!  We think we’ve stumbled upon an answer to Liliana’s nap time and bedtime reticence to sleep.  As I’ve mentioned in other posts, she has these strange behaviors (wild thrashing and loud, repetitive humming) that she uses to quiet herself.  It’s disturbing and heartbreaking to watch.  We don’t know the why to that yet, but we’re watchful, thinking we might still be able to get to the root of the problem.  Of course, she’s just been ripped from everything she’s ever known, she’s eating different foods, and she’s with these silly people who speak gibberish to her.

OK, so you know how awful we felt about closing the door on her during her nap time and how she fell asleep by the door.  Dan came up with the idea to put a gate (with an openable door) within the door jamb.  Then, if she gets out of bed, she doesn’t feel cut off from the rest of the house, and she can’t get into trouble (falling down the stairs is our primary concern).  After noticing that she was almost sedated with U2 last night (even though we had the volume up pretty loud), we set up the iPod, so that she could listen to the Sleepy Baby soundtrack.

Wow.  5 minutes, tops.  Dead asleep.  Absolutely amazing.  And she sleeps more solidly–a 2 1/2 hour nap.

I’m aware we’re creating another psychological crutch, but truthfully, I’d rather this one than the others.  I think as she adjusts and learns more about our faithfulness and trustworthiness, the need to “cope” might lessen or disappear altogether.

Couple of stories.

We have these beaded coasters.  The top surface is rough, because of the beads.  The bottoms are made out of silk.  I’ve been having Liliana feel everything, and now she does the same thing to me.  She grabs my hand and swipes it across surfaces, just as I’ve done to her.  [When building our house, I agonized over the combination of surfaces and textures of things, knowing that a child is kinesthetic in every way.  Do I sound like a worrywart?  I am.]  Anyway, each morning she goes to those coasters and wants me to feel them with her.  She does the same thing with the AllyZabba silk blanket my mom sent her (thanks, Mom!).

During breakfast preparation, I set her up on the counter so she can watch me crack the eggs for the scrambled eggs we’re having.  I let her touch the egg.  I let her whisk them up (okay, that’s the wrong verb for what she really does, but you know what I mean).  Late in the afternoon, I go grocery shopping while Dan and Liliana share daddy-daughter time.  When I come home, Liliana starts taking things out of the bags that Dan’s brought in from the car and set on the floor.  She brings each thing to me, and I name them for her.  She repeats the word, and goes back for more.  It’s funny.  I’m not trying to get her to learn things; she sincerely wants to learn.  She gets things backwards, too, which is funny.  If I say, “Excuse me,” she fake-burps.

We usually read in the morning after breakfast.  The books I’ve introduced her to are board books and are very basic.  I’ve chosen them for either their simplicity or their sensory qualities.  So, here are the books we’re reading now: Baby Faces, Sheep in a Jeep, Pat the Bunny (thanks, Jody, for recommending this one!), Shapes and Colors, and Hug.  There’s another book, which I made from a Martha Stewart kit.  [You can find it here.]  This one, believe it or not, is her favorite.  Not because it’s anything special, but instead of reading the numbers to her, I make the sound of the animal on each page.  She has me do it over and over again.

We’ve designated the bottom step leading upstairs as the Naughty Step (thanks, Sara, for this idea!).  Basically, the idea is that she has to sit there for however many minutes she is old.  Since we’re using it for mostly temper tantrums right now, we wait about 30 seconds after she stops crying, and then we say, “Thank you.  Do you want to come back and join us?”  I only had to do this once yesterday, and she cried all of 10 seconds.  She wants so much to be with us, because to her, we’re doing very cool things.  It’s amazing that a step has so much power.  If she were a teensy bit more clever (and I’m not putting it past her to discover this), she would scream and scream and scream, and soon, we’d be so sick of it, we’d have to find another solution to the problem.  She really is more powerful than she knows.

Really, a world overrun by toddlers would be much scarier than a nuclear holocaust or another world war.  I’m joking, of course, but there’s a kernel of truth in that statement.

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