At around seven months, Jordan's real personality started to shine. One time she was being so loud in the car that it was really distracting me. She was making non stop, random screeching sounds. This eventually lead to a yelling match between she and I. Here's how it played out: At first I calmly asked her to please stop yelling. After doing this many times with no success, I raised my voice and told her to stop. This only lead to her increasing her volume and intensity. She actually began to change the loudness and pitch of her screams. It seemed as if she was testing me; checking to see if Mommy really means it. Well, this mommy did. But this mommy, while shouting back at her like a lunatic, was trying to pay more attention to the road than to her attitude-filled seven month old. And we wonder where the minivan-driving, soccer-mom, stereotype comes from. I must have looked like the poster child.
I never imagined that a child, at only seven months old, could manipulate and control her parent's reactions and emotions. But she was very good at it. Or was it that I was good at it?
At this point, Jordan's main goal in life appeared to be to pull herself up on her feet. At the couch, chairs, coffee table, it didn't matter where. As long as she was standing up, she was happy. She would then sit herself back down and move on to another location. Everything was great, except when she was in her crib. Sitting herself down in her crib...that for some reason, was a problem. She refused to sit herself back down on her bottom. Every time. Every night. Here we go again. This led to a huge set back with the crying before bedtime. Just when we had gotten the whole self soothing situation under control, she had to learn to stand up.
At first she would be very pleased with herself while standing up in her crib. She would shout and cheer and basically have her own little party in there. But then she wouldn't sit down. Or was it that she couldn't sit down? Or maybe she just refused to sit herself down. I really have no idea. All I know is that once she realized that she was alone, and still standing up, she did not sit down. She banged and shook the crib bars and just lost it. Again. With that tortuous scream, which led to the frantic sobbing. The only way that she would go to sleep was if we went in and sat her down.
And I am proud to say that I didn't let it go on for nearly as long this time. I eased up a bit and eventually did what needed to be done. (Even though I had no idea why it was necessary). It's good to know that sometimes I relinquished the "power" and helped to make the situation easier for all of us.
But the question still stood: Why would we need to do this for her? Why wouldn't she just sit down on her own like she was able to do all day long, instead of working herself up into a frenzy? Maybe she was stubborn and just wanted us to come into her room. But she was only seven months old. That's a pretty advanced thought process for such a young child. Could she have been scared to sit down? I guess, but it seemed unlikely since she was able to do it throughout the rest of the day. Not surprisingly, I began to wonder if we were, again, by sitting her down, pandering to her needs.
I'm think that I'm beginning to see a pattern here. :/
Speaking about pandering to her needs, Adam and I had this great epiphany. We learned that if we put a few pacifiers in the crib with her (like at least five), she slept much better. This way if she woke up, she would immediately see one of them, and put it in her mouth. Without any help from us. It was a beautiful thing. A beautiful, self soothing thing. Of course at this point in time we didn't think about how much harder this would make it when taking those same pacifiers away. Nope. It never even entered our minds.
Thank you for reading.
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