sight isn’t always necessary

It seems that just when I think everything is going great, I’m brought back down to reality with a really bad night with Connor, or a fight with Craig, or both combined into an evening of fun.

Last night was fine, actually, until around 3am.  Connor has a habit of coming in my room and sleeping in my bed, especially on nights that Craig is working.  And I normally don’t mind at all!  I mean, I’m lonely in my bed alone, having slept with someone next to me for the past 8 years, and if it makes Connor feel safe, warm, and happy, then I have no issue with it.  The problem arises when Craig is at home; when Connor wants to come into our bed on those nights, it’s just not comfortable.  He refuses to sleep in the middle of us, Craig is a big fucking lump at 3am and doesn’t move no matter what Connor’s doing to him, so I end up in the middle.  Or on the very edge of the bed.  Can you imagine!?!  A big fucking pregnant woman, being kicked out of her own bed by her 4 year old son, with a lump of a husband to watch it all go down (or sleep though it all, rather)!?!

So we have conversations about it.  Connor and I talk at length about how the nighttime is going to proceed, he agrees that he’s not going to come into Mommy’s room, I remind him that if he needs a kiss or has a bad dream he can ask me to come in for a minute to help him relax.  All seems well.  Then 3am strikes, and he’s obviously sleepy, and he forgets everything we’ve talked about.  He MUST come in my bed, RIGHT NOW, because HE WANTS IT AND HE’S THE BOSS.  Or whatever.  He refuses to hear me, he cries and wakes up the puppy, he whines constantly and calls “Mommy!” a thousand times; it’s crazy!  And no amount of threatening or consoling or anything works for him.

One time he asked if I would lay with him for a minute in his bed; he clings to that now too.  Again, totally absurd, to expect a big pregnant woman who can hardly sleep anyway to get in bed with her preschooler, crunched into the wall (he refuses to be on the inside), just because he wants it.  When I ask Craig to help me with this, it only gets worse.  Not only can I hear Connor whining and crying and insisting on ridiculous things, I can also hear Craig giving his long-winded and way too in-depth explanations (especially for 3am) to Connor about why he can’t have what he’s asking for.  Connor does not respond well to Craig’s explanations; I wouldn’t either.  They’re boring, they don’t make sense, and they assume that not only is Connor older than he is, but he can comprehend things going on around him at that late an hour.  I mean, our kid is amazingly intelligent, but Craig’s expectations of what Connor should be are way out of line, in my opinion.  Anyway, I’m missing my own point.

Craig went into Connor’s room, the second time he got up, and started to “deal with the situation.”  Mostly he just blabbed in a voice too loud for the hour, and everything began to escalate.  Connor got louder, Craig did too, Connor started crying, Craig didn’t try to stop it (he yelled at him for crying, but didn’t grab a tissue or insist in a firm but QUIET voice that Connor stop crying), so now… Connor’s all congested, Craig’s annoying the shit out of me with is stupid big words and stuff that will definitely make Connor tune out…

So I ended up on the couch!!!  ME!  ON THE COUCH!

And you know what so infuriating?  Nobody has any useful advice.  Mari’s advice is to punish/reward, and it doesn’t work with Connor.  As “similar” as she thinks our children are, the fact is that Connor’s a boy, he’s my child and has my level of determination for things – even if it’s insisting on getting to sleep in Mommy’s bed, and he’s six months older than Savannah.  Rewards work for a day, a week maybe.  Then they immediatley fizzle out.  Believe me, we’ve tried that.

Spankings… just don’t work.  Maybe they worked for me, but I resent them, and I don’t know if it really was an effective way of teaching us anything (except for how to be more deceptive and sneaky, to avoid spankings).  Plus, spanking at night is just shitty – he’s already exhausted and cranky, so I’m going to make his butt hurt and make him feel like he’s a bad person… and then expect him to fall asleep peacefully?  The threat of a spanking is sometimes somewhat effective, but I feel all dirty and nasty for using that one when I do, because I told Connor explicitly that we are not going to have spankings in our house anymore.  If I break my word on that, he will remember.

Christine didn’t really offer any advice, only said that she thinks the reason why Ashley didn’t have these problems was because they really did just sleep with her all the time.  They saw no reason not to, and looking back at the way things were working out for them, I kinda agree!  I mean, it was more hectic, and if Ashley needed to have that comfort at the end of her day, it wasn’t worth putting up a fight about.  So I can’t do what Christine did, because their situation does not match mine.

Mom suggested talking to him about it, which seems to work until, like I said, the middle of the night.  The doctor said we’re “doing everything right”, and her only advice was to maybe stay in his room for less time when we’re putting him to bed.  That also doesn’t work, and I can’t put all of the blame on Craig but I have to say he’s been the first one to break every time we’ve tried something like this; he spends about 20 minutes telling Connor these elaborate stories at night, so that when he leaves the room Connor is fast asleep.  All of the advice you can ever get in books or online or wherever says not to do this, and that kids need to fall asleep on their own so that they know how to get back to sleep when they wake up in the middle of the night.  Whatever; if it’s easy for Craig, he’s going to resort to it.  Anything to make his life immediately easier, even if it makes our collective lives harder in the long run.

UGH.  I guess I just have to read through the rest of that book I bought, to see if eventually the author is going to get to something tangible for me to try.  It’s really hard to feel all hopeful and good about this change we’re going to make when every night things seem to get worse!

I took Gus to the vet the other day, too.  I asked the vet about his aggressiveness and his tendency to bite, and I got a lot of good information to take home about how to train Gus to relax a little.  I read it.  I want to follow it.  And then there’s my husband, who really thinks that his “reasoning voice” can train not only a tired child at 3am, but a brand new puppy as well!  Gus bites Craig, and instead of providing Gus with something that he can bite, Craig will say “No!” about 20 times.  “No bite, Gus.  No.  No bite Gus.  No.  No.  No.”  BLECH!  JUST GET HIS THING HE CAN BITE!  Do the whole “Yip” thing and then walk away from the puppy!  Teach him the way the VET TOLD US TO TEACH HIM, not your own crazy “rationalizing” way of training everything!  Can Gus understand English?  Does Gus indicate to you that he knows that “No” means don’t chew on that incredibly yummy finger?

I’m really frustrated today.  Frustrated for so many reasons, but the number one reason is that I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like I’m in charge of the things that go on around me.  And I’m frustrated because my blueberry stuff was rotten.  And I’m frustrated because I’m exhausted, but the smell of my coffee makes me want to vomit.