As this time of year approaches there seems to be a little bit more spunk in every ones step! Maybe, it's the cooler weather but, even our dogs become more hyper and act a little odd. When the boys were young I'll never forget an incident I like to call "The Binky Blunder". Nikolas was so enamored with his Papeela(the Greek term for a pacifier) that he, literally, stashed them like a crackhead does with his drugs. Who ever thought that I would have to buy so many of these peculiar contraptions that ,at times, I wish I would've picked a brand and bought stock in it. With them "hiding" in our couch, in car seats, and all over random corners of our home I knew it was going to be a major challenge to curtail their use. I used to wake up at night sweating and guilt ridden after having dreamed of Nikolas growing up with teeth that just grew out horizontally from his face because of my negligence as a mom. They were so vivid and horrific that I even went so far as picturing strange mechanical headgear gadgets that you might see in a movie like Mel Gibsons "Mad Max;beyond the thunder dome". Since, becoming a mom I've realized my guilt makes my imagination go into overdrive. I have been told that I also have a flair for the dramatic.
So, after watching an episode of "Supernanny" I was inspired to try one of her methods of removing Nikolas's crutch but, I added my own spin to it. Supernanny said to gather the pacifier's in a bag that u would hang from a tree and leave over night for the "Pacy fairy" to take and replace with a toy. This seemed simple enough but, Nikolas wasn't into folklore and was born as cynical as a juror during the O.J. Simpson trial. So, my version of the Binky charade was that we would hand out these gathered binky's while trick or treating( It was wrapped in Ziploc! No need to gross out the neighbors!) We would explain that ALL kids did this when they turned 2 as a right of passage. I thought that since Nikolas couldn't really talk yet he was too young to compare notes with anybody. While giving up his precious commodity ,my hope, was that the promise of candy would entice him enough to give up his papeela.
As we dressed Nikolas in his Sponge Bob costume he acted like zoo animals do when they sense a tornado is coming. He was agitated and kept crying no matter how cheery I tried to act. He ran from me when I tried to brush his hair. He screamed when I tried getting the sponge bob costume on and did the "dead as a door nail" trick. This is where your child becomes freakishly heavy and limp upon picking them up and falls ,heavily, to the ground. I think kids must have had a secret meeting about this trick, as I see it used all the time! It's a great tactic to piss off mothers everywhere! We have pictures of this day and in all of them Nikolas is purple, screaming and sweaty wearing his sponge bob costume.
By the time we had approached the first house I had cheated and already given him candy just so we could leave the house. After we had handed out flyer's to our neighbors explaining the situation they knew the drill. After we approached the first home Nikolas began screaming nonstop. His tantrum reached a decibel that is was so loud that it literally enters a grown persons central nervous system and begins to aggravate their eardrums like nails on a chalkboard. People began to loathe my son! One woman actually offered to pay me to move on to the next house. We didn't even make it up her driveway.
In hindsight,maybe Halloween wasn't the best time to try weaning my son from his comfort source. Picturing my beloved son growing up looking like Gomer Pyle was what fueled my insanity. After all was said and done, Nikolas found another papeela stashed in my pillow while I was sleeping that night so ,apparently, my plan had some holes in it. His minor addiction actually passed quite naturally about 6 months later when his cousin teased him for being a baby for needing one. Just like that, he decided that he was too mature for this silly fixation, without any forcing on my part. I realized then, that being a good parent means allowing your kids the space to do things on their own time table. I have learned when to step in and when to back off, as we have both grown into our roles as parent and child. It's definitely a work in progress.
Parenting is filled with tons of trial & error's like this. Books can only prepare you so much. Some can even mislead you. I learned this the hard way after reading a book on attachment parenting. It described a parenting method that made it sound as if my kids and I would have this naturally occurring ,organic bond, like you see with animals on the discovery channel. The key was to keep them "attached" to you ,physically, as much as possible. This book is the reason that I haven't gotten a full nights rest in 9 years because I let my kids sleep with me like a litter of puppies. Obviously, I didn't think it through, very well ,when I brought my wee, swaddled ,infant into our bed at night. Now, sleeping ,for me has turned into a fiasco because my kids are either oddly violent at night or I need a bigger bed. I had envisioned us all sweetly nuzzled together as we drifted off to sleep being lulled by the sweet sounds of gentle breathing. Instead it's my daughter yelling out at her brother ,savagely in her sleep,the comforter somehow getting pulled halfway off the bed, and my chihuahua sneaking inside my pillowcase and growling when I roll over on her. I wake up by being elbowed in the ear and my big dog breathing his sour, stinky breathe in my face. I guess you could say it's organic, even natural, but, not what I had in mind. Even if they start out in their own beds, somehow, by morning, they all manage to quietly crawl into my bed while I'm asleep. I need to revisit this issue soon, as it's become clear that my sleep environment no longer belongs to me. I wonder if it's time for me to tune into Supernanny to see if she has a remedy for this issue?
