Adventures in Crib Diving

Oh, it's been a few weeks since my son's 5:30am wakings...but in true toddler fashion, he has created a new challenge to keep me on my toes. It's like every time I pass a mission, I go up a Mommi difficulty level. So, this newest challenge is threefold: temper tantrums, crib diving, and separation anxiety.

The temper tantrum part is pretty straight forward, and par for the course for most 2 year olds, I'm told: essentially, he goes into a blind rage and won't see reason whenever he doesn't get his way.  I want him to stop playing with his cars and get clothes on so that we can go out? DUMP LAUNDRY BASKET FULL OF CLEAN, FOLDED CLOTHES ON FLOOR, ENSURING NOT ONE ITEM REMAINS FOLDED.  I dare to refuse him cookies before dinner? THROW CARS AT TV.  I won't let him play with the electric carving knife? DESTROY WOODEN RAILROAD, HURL PIECES ACROSS ROOM.  I forget that he wants to ring our own doorbell before returning inside the house? COLLAPSE ON THE PORCH, POUND IT WITH FISTS.  I feed the dog, without asking him if he wants to dump the food into the bowl for me? COMPLETE AND UTTER MELTDOWN.  I can't say I've found an appropriate way to deal with these fits.  I've tried talking to him, holding him, staying with him, leaving him alone, ignoring him, timeouts (HA! That was a joke!)...nothing works.  That's not true...sometimes distraction will work, at least temporarily...but more often, just giving him whatever the eff it was that he wanted in the first place will quell the throbbing in my head (from all the screaming)! :S

My last post detailed my son's first couple days of daycare, and things seemed to be going much better than I'd expected. Such is my life: that didn't last. On day 3, we had our first me-having-to-walk-away-while-he-cried-and-reached-for-me-with-outstretched-arms drop off :( But thank Jesus (I like to say it the Spanish way) for those video cameras! I was able to check on him online and see that he did settle down and partake in some activities. When I picked him up, though, he burst into tears at first sight of me and launched himself at my legs. His teacher said he'd been up and down throughout the day, but had settled into nap much faster than before - win! But...had only slept for an hour and then cried - LOUDLY - for the second hour of the ministry-mandated 2-hour naptime - less win :s

On Day 4, things got even worse! The daycare called me to come and pick him up before lunch because he had a fever of 102 and wouldn't stop crying! Poor baby! I rushed home from work to get him. But as soon as he saw me...the tears stopped...and he didn't feel hot...and he was singing in the car on the way home...and he ate well at lunch, and started happily playing with his toys...?? Let those be "Clues" numbers 1 through 5. I took his temperature, but if anything, it was low (Clue 6). I looked in his mouth to see if he was cutting another tooth, but a quick check with my dental hygienist friend, Sabrina, confirmed that he actually has all his teeth already (until 5 or so, anyway), so it wasn't that! (Clue 7). So was he sick, or what?? He sure wasn't seeming like it!

Onto nap time - even more important for sick, feverish babies, right? Not according to Avery. He just wouldn't sleep! I left him in his crib for a while, yelling "LAY DOWN A MAMA'S BED!" over and over again - which was bizarre, because I have NEVER been the take-the-baby-into-my-bed type, so I don't know what even gave him the idea that that was an option!  And then the most remarkable thing happened: I heard a thump, his white noise stopped, his door opened, and he just toddled right out of his room! This was new! The way he did it, too...like, "ain't no thang"! I didn't know what else to do, so I just figured naptime wasn't happening that day, and we went down to play cars. He failed to show any signs of illness for the rest of the day - which got me thinking: had my son just faked sick to come home from school for the first time??  At 2 years old??

That night, I put him to bed early, since he was "sick" and had skipped his nap. All was well...until 4am, when he woke up crying, the dove out of his crib again! I ran into his room, picked him up, and bounced him back to sleep. I also checked at that time for a fever (no), whether he'd been sick (no), or had a dirty diaper (no).  Back to sleep, but at 5:15am, I heard my bedroom door open, and a 3 foot tall, blonde-haired monster walked in!  He didn't even waste time crying that time!  The part that kills me, is that he's supposed to be all distressed in there, right?  And yet, once he escapes his crib, he pauses to turn off his own white noise machine before making his way out!  What a kid!

Against my better judgement, I took him into my bed then and gave him a bottle.  We both managed to fall back to sleep, thank God. But this experience, plus all the previous Clues led me to believe that maybe my son wasn't sick at all; maybe he was suffering from separation anxiety from his mommi!  It makes sense: he had always been cared for in our home, but in the summer, he got Mommi at home with him fulltime...and then all of a sudden, he was being taken to this place with strangers and new rules and routines and NO MOMMI - and he was just not okay with it.  So if separation anxiety was the problem, it didn't seem to me that keeping him home from daycare to cling to Mommi all day was the solution...so I sent him anyway.  BIG tears when I dropped him off.  But when I picked him up later that day (a day I spent anxiously watching my phone, sure the daycare would be calling to ask me to come get him again :S), they said he had a really good day!  He had his best daycare nap yet!  And that night, he slept through the night with no mad escapes from his crib!

But the next day...naptime hell.  At least I was better prepared for this time.  I got out my trusty sleep Bible, and read that babies rarely suffer any injury from climbing out of their cribs, and that often moving them to a big kid bed before their third birthday causes more sleep issues than it solves.  The recommended course of action was to practice a "silent return to bed", again and again, until your kid stops escaping.  The idea is that you remain silent and unemotional, because ANY attention, even negative, might encourage your child.  So: into crib went Avery.  Not a minute later, I heard a thud and he had jumped out again!  I went back into his room, picked him up, put him back in his crib, turned on his white noise machine (he had stopped to turn it off again, too!), left the room, closed the door.  I barely made it back to my room to check the video monitor when I heard the next escape thud!  Back I went, process repeated.  HE ESCAPED SEVENTEEN TIMES IN THE FIRST FIFTEEN MINUTES!!!  My heart was racing, I was in a sweat - I was getting my cardio quota for the whole day!  After the seventeenth time, though, he stopped trying to get out.  He spent the next hour yelling at me...but he stayed in there!  Success?  I don't know.  After an hour, I decided naptime was not going to happen, and went in to rescue him.  At the beginning of nap, I foolishly believed I might have a little nap, too, so had taken my hair out of its ponytail.  Why am I telling you this?  You'll see...  The whole time I listen to my child cry, I envision him upset, distraught, an emotional wreck...  So at the end of the hour, I go in to rescue my poor baby, and he abruptly stops yelling, points at me, waving his finger back and forth, and says, "Mama fix the hair!" !!!!!  Are you kidding me??  Hello, Ronald (a la Paper Bag Princess - get it?). Big sigh.

We are now a few days past that last in-the-crib nap effort.  The poor little future-stylist-slash-escape-artist had little bruises all over his legs from his escape efforts, and a few on his poor little baby head, too :(, so I knew that the crib was no longer a safe option.  I looked into crib tents, but decided against one, only because he was close enough to being of big-boy bed age, anyway.  My little guy spent a night at his dad's between then and now, and as I suspected, he slept just fine there!  This further supported my theory that the crib diving was separation anxiety related - because he is having separation anxiety FROM MOMMI, not anyone else - and at Daddy's, he knows Mama is not an option, so doesn't bother crying to get into her (my) bed!

Anyhow, we decided to take the plunge and move him into a big boy bed.  Well, a mini-plunge: we converted his crib into a toddler daybed, so it still has 3 sides, and still uses his crib mattress.  The first night, he went down to sleep just fine, rolled out of bed around 3am, but didn't wake and continued his sleep on the floor!  But he woke up rather upset at 5:45 :s Likely because he was pretty disoriented!  I managed to soothe him in his own bed until 6:15, when his GroClock told him it was okay to get up anyway.  The next day, he napped in his big boy bed for an hour - then woke up crying.  That night, he slept through till 5:45 again, with another unconscious fall out of bed around 11pm.  I suspect he's more sensitive to vibrations from us walking around on the floor outside his room when he's sleeping on his floor, and wakes up when we start moving around in the morning.  Boo.  Last night, I wedged him into bed against the back rails with a stuffed monkey, and he managed to stay in bed the whole night, and slept a little later, too (6:10am)! :)  So, we're getting there.

I also decided to send him to daycare every day this week, suspecting that the consistency would help him with the separation anxiety, which would in turn help with the sleep stuff.  And so far, it's been working! :)  The last few days at daycare have been really good - his teacher says he only cries for a few minutes after I drop him off, and has been happy and napping very well :)  He's sleeping better at home.  An the temper tantrums have stopped!  For now, I know.  I'm sure they'll be back; this is the Terrible Twos, afterall :s  But there you have it.  Accidental Supermommi has been semi-super and semi-successful at overcoming the challenges her toddler has thrown at her this week ;)

Do you have any experience with separation anxiety, crib diving, or transitioning to a big kid bed?  I'd love to hear about it!  And come on...I KNOW all of you with kids over 2 have at least a FEW temper tantrum stories :D  Please share!