Today marked the 13th day in the last two weeks that Isobel hasn’t napped. I’m still trying for them most days – I’ll put her in her crib for an hour and a half or two, til she protests to come out. She doesn’t sleep but she does have relatively quiet time, surrounded by books, stuffies and Dora action figures.
This is not enough for her. This is not enough to stop the devil’s spawn from spewing from her aura at around 5pm. Which means two things: I generally start craving a drink at 5:05 and I have raised my voice more times in the past two weeks than I ever thought I would.
And for that? I feel like a total bitch. Because it’s like I’m not keeping my shit together and I’m being cranky, not the other way around. It’s supposed to be my goal to teach her how to express herself in the most freeing (yet not annoying or violent) way possible and here I am at 6pm, eying the clock and repeating questions at her for the sixth time in that tone of voice.
The one I used on her father, when he would ignore something I asked when we were fighting.
Tonight, I took the giant leap of putting her to bed at 6:50. She was whiney, sure. She was moody, fine. Completely irrational, not listening to anything and smacking me with books? Not going to happen. It was partially intuition that she needed to sleep, but it was also partly as a response to her FingTFO for the past two hours.
Really, I have been thinking of trying harder. Of being more interactive and creative and gentle. Planning and organizing better, and reinstalling her routine. But I won’t have the tools, time or emotional ability to do more for the next two weeks. I just can’t. I’m operating on fumes here.
