Last night, Simon forgot about his soother. We were going through our usual bedtime routine, and we read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Clifford and Spot, and we cuddled for a minute on the rocking chair, all with the usual nightly ration of three soothers sitting on the dresser at my elbow, garnering absolutely no interest from Simon.<\/p>\n
I put him in his crib and gave him another book to read – and can I pause here to say how much I love the fact that Simon, like his mother, reads himself to sleep at night? How cute is that?<\/p>\n
And still he didn’t ask for his soothers. I kissed him goodnight and went downstairs, and figured I’d be up there in about three minutes when he realized “Well,” I thought to myself smugly. “That was easy. No fuss, no bargaining, no problem.” I’ll put the soothers away in the morning, never mention them again, and we’ll be done. It’s a little earlier than Tristan (reluctantly) gave his up<\/a>, but so much easier.<\/p>\n And it lasted until exactly 3:12 am.<\/p>\n “Mooooommmmmyyyyyy,” came the plaintive wail in the darkness. I stumbled into his room, and he tried to convince me he was ready to face the day. “It’s morningtime,” he informed me brightly. “I go downstairs!”<\/p>\n “No no no,” I I really have to work on my nighttime parenting skills.<\/p>\n I have a bit of an apology to offer. I know this is my blog and therefore my space to do whatever the heck I want, but I feel like I haven’t been able to get out of my personal headspace lately to blog anything outside of arm’s reach.<\/p>\n There was all sorts of blogworthy stuff in the paper today – the Democratic victories in the US (hooray!), some scary information in a Lancet article linking childhood and prenatal exposure to industrial toxins to autism and Parkinsons, and even the breakup of Brittney and Kevin.<\/p>\n In the last little while, though, any time I try to blog anything except an anecdote, organizing my thoughts into a rational argument is like pulling teeth. I’m having a crisis of confidence on my capability to think critically. I think part of it comes from the Motherlode conference, where I served up some fluffy, lightweight stuff compared to the fascinating research put forth by my friends. Part of it is work-related, too: I’m supposed to be a strategic thinker, and mostly I find myself doing the equivalent of sitting at a meetig with my mouth gaping open, a runner of drool escaping the corner of my mouth, as I realize how completely I’m failing to see the big picture. Of course, everything is only exacerbated by the season (post-Halloween sugar crash + pre-holiday ennui + dreary weather pretty much constantly since Labour Day) and my own hormonal condition.<\/p>\n I’m not looking for sympathy or reassurance or anything… just coming clean with something that’s been bugging me for a while now.<\/p>\n This, too, shall pass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last night, Simon forgot about his soother. We were going through our usual bedtime routine, and we read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Clifford and Spot, and we cuddled for a minute on the rocking chair, all with the usual nightly ration of three soothers sitting on the dresser at my elbow, garnering absolutely no … Continue reading “The day the soothers didn’t go away”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it-is-all-about-me","category-mothering-without-a-licence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}his<\/s> my mistake, but through the Rick Mercer Report<\/em> and then the entire taped episode of Sunday’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip <\/em>(LOVE! that show), not a peep. When I checked on him on my way to bed, he was sleeping peacefully with his arms splayed over his head, his mouth empty.<\/p>\npleaded<\/s> insisted. “It’s not morning. It’s nighttime. It’s sleeping time. Go back to sleep.” And without a waffle or second thought, I reached into the basket and handed him every soother I could wrap my fingers around. “Here, look, soothers. You go back to sleep now. Nighty-night!”<\/p>\n