Night Processing

Last night was a long night for some of us. Mouse was up, about 5 or 6 times, from the time she went to bed at 8 until 3 am. It seemed just when Hubster and I were finally drifting back to sleep, we’d hear the scuff of footie pajamas on the carpet in the hall and then the squeak of our bedroom door being opened, followed by a whispered “Mom” from the foot of the bed.

She’d come up, usually to my side and ask to snuggle. The first time she came in, I let her stay for about ½ an hour then I took her back to bed and stayed with her for about 5 minutes to get her settled. She seemed to be sleeping so I left and tried to get settled myself. However, about 30 minutes later, she came back. Hubster took her back to her own bed that time and other 3 times as well. At one point, she almost threw a tantrum because I wasn’t the one taking her back. Yeah, wanted to deal with THAT at 3:30 am.

It was weird; very unusual for her. We haven’t had a night like this with her for a long time. At least once or twice a week she comes to us at night time, but usually she’ll go right back to sleep and stay in her bed once we take her back. It didn’t seem like she was having nightmares as she didn’t seem scared.

I suppose I could have just let her stay as she was obviously needing something, but Baboo had been in our bed for a while the night before and I didn’t really sleep very well, clinging to the outer inch and dreaming about falling out of bed while my tiny toddler had the rest of the KING sized bed.

When Hubster couldn’t get back to sleep after taking her back to bed for the 4th time and decided to get up and watch some tv (I guess, I’m not sure) I lay there trying to get back to sleep myself. My mind was starting to wander as it usually does when I’m up in the middle of the night. It started singing Noggin’s Wow Wow Wubzy Robot Dance Song. (Please KILL me) So to STOP my head from singing “Robot Dance. Robot Dance. We want to do the Robot Dance. Here’s your number, here’s your chance. Let’s all do the robot dance” with an annoying techno robotic-like musical accompaniment (shudder), I tried to figure out what was going on with Mouse.

After a few minutes of pondering, I was shuttled back to her baby days. As a baby she’d be fine all day, regardless of what we did: stayed home, shopping, outing with friends etc. However, by the evening if we did anything stimulating, like the mall for example, she’d be an absolute MESS. She’d scream and cry for hours and there was almost nothing we could do to console her. We’d take her for walks in the pack carrier or sling when we could or just walk with her up and down the halls of our apartment building when we couldn’t. It didn’t happen consistently enough for us to think it was colic, but it took us a while to figure out what was going on. She was highly sensitive to stimulating things, but just not immediately. Everyone would always say how good and cute she was while we were out and she would be. She rarely cried when we were out. It hit her all at night as she tried to process everything.

She’s gotten better with time and maturity and a bigger vocabulary to be able to talk about things, however every now and then we go through some of the night time processing.

Yesterday, Mouse had a play date with a friend from school yesterday. She was supposed to go for a couple of hours after school in the afternoon, but school was cancelled because of the cold, so the other Mom, whose daughter was REALLY looking forward to the play date, drove here to pick her up about 10:30 in the morning and planned to keep her until about 4 in the afternoon.

I was a bit apprehensive about this as Mouse had never been at someone’s house that long without me before. We talked about it and she said she wanted to go, and I know the other Mom pretty well and her daughter is really sweet, so I wasn’t really worried about the girls fighting or anything.

When I picked her up at 4, she was excited to tell me about her day. She had a great time and had fun and the other Mom said she was great; well behaved, had a good time and that the girls played well together and there were no major incidences that needed to be reported.

I knew Mouse was tired and so we planned a pretty quiet evening. It was movie night so we had a pizza, watched a movie and then put the girls to bed. We made sure to have quite a bit of cuddle time and didn’t push talking about the big new experiences too much. She really didn’t want to talk too much about it.

I realized after lying in bed that this was a huge thing for her. She’d been away from me ALL day with someone she doesn’t know really well . She had to take in a lot of information and experience a lot of new things all by herself. I wasn’t there to interpret, explain and referee or act as the grounding device she could come to when she needed to find something familiar. Even I felt weird not having her here for most of the day.

So, last night seemed to be one of those times where she needed to process all that had happened. She needed to process the fact that she’s growing up a little bit more, that she can handle herself for longer periods of time without me there and that while she SAYS “MOooom, I’m FINE” (cos she’s 4.5 going on 13) she still misses me. And those are some tough concepts to reconcile. I know, because I was trying to figure it out too. She’s my baby and my big girl all at the same time.

Eventually, we all fell back to sleep, and at 9:15 Hubster is still sleeping. Today is another day, just like any other day, but I think we all know, we’ve jumped through a pretty big growing up hoop.