High Maintenance Mom

I'm sitting here listening to our three year-old cry in his room. I know that we have at least three nights of this. We've done it before and it still sucks. When he was younger it was easier and we all slept better. I was able to let him cry and he was able to cry for a short period of time and then fall asleep. It was the language development that made it hard...

He learned to manipulate us early on. He was the 18 month old who would scream, "you're hurting me" in public whenever he didn't want to do what I asked. He's now screaming "I'm sad" "I want my mommy" "I have an owwie" "mommy, I'm having some trouble going to sleep" and other exciting pleas. Last night it was, "I'm hungry" "I need to use the big potty" (there's a little potty in his room) and our favorite "aaaaaaaaaah there's an ant in my room".

His yell sounded like a hysterical plea. We both went in. He was crying next to a set of train tracks pointing at a mark on the hardwood floor. My husband touched it with his finger and explained that it was part of the floor. I did the same. Then I helped our son touch his finger to the floor. He was still crying and talking about the ant, "but he crawled on my tracks...". To which my husband responded, "it must have been a different ant". Seriously. I thought we were going to be in his room all night looking for the ant. So we told him the cat would protect him, gave him a hug, and left. He eventually went to sleep.

It appears that he has gone to sleep tonight too. In the time that it's taken me to write this, he has stopped yelling. Each night it gets a little easier, except for the night he watched television first and then screamed for 45 minutes about not being able to read a story. I can only hope that if we do this long enough, he will switch back to his earlier bedtime (the one he had before he realized he was getting a baby brother).