You know what I'm talking about.
Your kid isn't sleeping so you have to lay in their room so they stop screaming like someone is about to murder them. They finally calm down so instead of possibly upsetting the peace, you crawl, scoot, army crawl - basically anything you can - out of the room.
Luckily I don't have to use the crawl when we are at home. But it's definitely necessary when we are other places. We don't travel a lot so she's not used to sleeping other places and she doesn't exactly handle it well. Cry-it-out is a method we only had to do a couple times here at home but one we have to do other places pretty much every time we travel. The only problem is that Addison gets herself so worked up other places that she can't get herself settled back down.
This last weekend we went to Iowa to visit my in-laws, which meant the port-a-crib and sleeping in an unknown room. Or at least one she didn't remember since the last time we were there was around Christmas.
The first night went as I expected - horrible! She wouldn't settle down. She screamed. She cried. She threw puppy. It really sucked. It took several rounds of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' then a low crawl to get out of the room. It was several hours after we initially put her down before she finally fell asleep. It was exhausting. Then of course in the middle of the night she woke up and ended up in bed with us. None of us slept well that night.
When the second night came around I really thought it would go better. I thought since she knew the room she would be fine. But that wasn't the case. She wasn't screaming and crying quite as much as she did the night before but she just wasn't settling. Rob and I took turns going down several times. We thought we finally got her settled but then she was up again
I went back down, prepared to do the same thing as the night before since it seemed to work. I walked into the room, said "Addison Sophia Evans you lay down right now!" and she immediately curled into a ball. I sat on the floor and sang to her. I laid on the floor quietly. She was quiet, but before long she started playing with the sides of the port-a-crib. Then she talked a little. And before long she was singing. The longer I laid there the angrier I got.
I knew as soon as I stepped out of the room she would start screaming yet if I laid on the floor and did nothing she would sing. I was livid at her. She was being difficult for no reason. She was fine. She was just being a punk. So I stand up and tell her that she's fine. I tell her to go to sleep. Then I turn on heel and march out of the room. No more crawling.
I go upstairs and by the time I get there she's crying again. I turn down the monitor some and tell everyone that she's fine and set my alarm. What I was going to do in ten minutes when my alarm went off I didn't know. But I knew that for ten minutes no one was going to step back into that room. And before the ten minute timer was up she was silent and asleep. The rest of the night she slept in her port-a-crib without issue.
She's a great sleeper when we are at home but she's always so difficult when we are other places. And she knows that we will play into her hands. We will go in quickly to soothe her. We are at her beck and call, something we aren't at home.
So will I crawl out of her room again? Yes probably. Will we go through this same thing the next time we travel? Yes probably. But for this one night, I won. And that's good enough for me right now.
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