I am not 100% sure, but I think Montgomery had her first temper tantrum on Saturday night. Let me preface the story by saying she’s usually a pretty easy-going happy baby and she really only cries when she’s hungry or if something is hurting her. She’s also put herself on somewhat of her own routine: morning nap around 10am, afternoon nap around 2pm, bedtime between 8pm and 9pm, nighttime bottles at around 11:30pm, bottle #2 at around 3:30am, and wakes around 6:30am or 7am.
On Saturday night I was getting her ready for bed at about 8pm. The typical routine usually entails a bath (although we didn’t give her one that night), turn down the lights in the living room, turn off TV, relax in the glider and listen to a compilation of soothing songs by Sarah McLachlan. There is usually a bedtime bottle of milk too. This combination of things usually triggers sleep mode in this child within five minutes, but on Saturday night, she continued to cry and even SCREAM loudly, despite the routine and my usual efforts. I thought that something must be wrong! Is she hungry again? Is she hurting? Teething? Have gas pains? Or heaven forbid – something worse? She had just taken a full bottle so she refused any more. She burped just fine so gas didn’t seem to be the problem. I gave her a little bit of Tylenol in case it was her teething. There was no fever so I didn’t think she was sick in any other way. Still no change.
Anyway, I got out of the glider and tried gently bouncing her lightly in my arms or over my shoulder in the dim lights of the living room, trying to sing to her calmly over her piercing screams. After 10 minutes of that and my arms and legs exhausted, I tried getting back in the glider. No improvement – still crying and screaming. So I said what the heck, I’ll just tire her out by keeping her up so I kicked on the lights and the TV and sat back down in the glider, but 15 minutes later she’s still crying and squirming. So we played with some toys – I put her in her play pen with her toys but she immediately started crying. She’s bored with the play pen toys. I put her in her bouncy jumperoo. Same reaction. Not liking it. So we went outside – crying stops! Nighttime is fascinating – dogs are barking, horses are moving slowly in the pasture, strange sounds are coming out of the trees. She is mesmerized and the crying has stopped. Well, only for about five minutes and she got bored with that. Back inside. No signs of sleepiness at all.
OK, maybe a bath will help. I pull out the sink bath tub and start running the water while holder her on my hip. The sound of the running water quickly turns her head and the crying stops. She wants to play in the water. I pull her jammies off and in the tub she goes. She loves this – wants to hold the water sprayer and wants to lick the water. I let her play in the water for awhile since she’s not crying. I pull her out and dry her off. No crying but I’m dreading putting her jammies back on because she hates putting her arms through sleeves and this might trigger crying again. I manage to get the jammies on with minimal resistance. It’s almost 11pm at this point and I think her battery is losing steam. She starts to cry but now it’s a more labored cry – slow and intentional. I take advantage of the lack of resistance and kicky feet I am feeling from her and grab a bottle of formula. I shut off the TV and the lights and get back into the glider with bottle, which she takes eagerly and falls asleep.
My assessment the next day – she stopped crying whenever we did something she liked… This child has learned how to cry to get what she wants! OK call me naïve for not figuring that out that night (ok, I kinda knew in the back of my head but didn’t want to think she was already growing up that fast!). That night, Montgomery was fine when we were doing something SHE wanted to do – like go outside or take a bath. So, crying used to be limited to only hunger and pain, but those days are over. The game has changed to now include using crying to manipulate her parents! This is a new whole new chapter….
We also had our first attempts at eating baby food – which didn’t work out very well! I will write more about that later and post those photos.
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