Adeline is 13.5 months and she’s fully a toddler at this point. She seems to be developing and figuring out new things every day. It’s really amazing to see. And freaking adorable.
She’s really into playing hide and seek lately. She’ll basically hide behind/under anything: the bed, the crib, a chair, a blanket, her shirt. Really, anything. She loves to hide and wait until I start getting “worried” (“Oh no! Where did Adeline go??”) and then she pops her head out with a saucy little look. It’s really cute. It’s funny because she doesn’t really like it when I play peek-a-boo with her anymore – she’s like, “hello, mom, object permanence is so last year. I totally know you’re behind there.” But she doesn’t seem to have realized that I have object permanence as well. Or maybe she just thinks I’m an idiot. Maybe every time I act worried, she’s thinking, “geez mom, I’m right under this blanket, how stupid are you?!”
She’s also adopted the uber-toddler behavior of asking us to read the same book over and over and OVER again. She has always liked books, but now it’s one book in particular that she always wants: Night, Night, Little Pookie. She’ll pick it out off the bookshelf, carry it over to David or I, hand it to us and look at us expectantly. We read it to her and then hand it back to her. Then she’ll just hand it right back and look at us expectantly again. Or, if she’s really in a mood, she throws it at us. My little princess.
oooooh Poooooookie
She’s also really into kissing right now. She’ll kiss basically anything. Hold up girl, don’t be so promiscuous! We’ve been getting lots of holiday cards and she likes to kiss the other babies that she sees. I got her a subscription to National Geographic Little Kids and she flipped through the pages kissing all the animals. She’ll even kiss random people if we ask her to. She’s so full of love!
And then there’s the less cute things. On Christmas morning she had her first real temper tantrum. We got her a little shopping cart and as soon as we opened the box and she could sort of see what it was, she wanted to play with it. But it had lots of little parts and we needed to put it together first. So the entire time we put it together she was kicking and screaming and trying desperately to get to it. She’s had little mini-tamtrums before, but this was the first full-on tantrum. It lasted a good five minutes. I caught the last bit of it on video:
Like I said, she’s lucky she’s cute.
But even the cuteness isn’t making up for the serious sleep issues we’ve been having… We worked so hard on her sleep and we had four glorious months: she would go down easily and sleep all night and it was wonderful. Seriously, wonderful. And now for the last couple weeks it’s been horrible. Granted, she’s gotten at least four new teeth in a week and two of them are molars. So there’s that. But still. It’s been really brutal. Every time I put her down to sleep she just screams and screams and I have to basically soothe her to sleep like when she was a little baby. And she’s up for hours in the middle of the night. Last night she was up from 1:30 to 4:15. That’s just unbearable. She’s been sleeping basically seven hours at night and less than an hour of napping during the day. That means I have eight hours a day to do everything I can’t do while she’s awake – including blogging (hence why my posts have been a little sporadic and less than great of late) and, you know, sleeping… Come on Adeline, give mama a break, ok??
Anyone have this experience? I’m dying over here…
If it continues, you might want to pop in at the pediatrician’s office to let them take a look. Sometimes our worst behavior and sleep issues were actually medical things we were unaware of (ear infection, strep throat, etc). If it’s truly teeth, it should settle down soon. I’ve learned that it’s easier to set up bad habits with a toddler than a baby, so we kept any nocturnal doings as boring and perfunctory as possible. Good luck!
My LO has started throwing mini temper tantrums too, but they only last a few seconds, LOL. Do you have any sort of music box? We have one from Vtech that plays music and puts a design up on the ceiling. It plays for 10 minutes and then will come back on if my LO starts crying. It works really well to help soothe him to sleep. Hope she starts sleeping more for you soon!
At least she’s better at hide and seek than I was. I would just stand in the middle of the room and cover my eyes. It’s a wonder I don’t fall down more.
If there’s something keeping her up, it could be a new skill, like talking, or something bothering her, like teeth, as you said. I can’t imagine her being an awesome sleeper and all of a sudden reverting unless something is keeping her up. It’s always those pesky teeth that keep my EB up, and she’s usually a champion sleeper. Good luck!
Molars are the worst! The boys would start to sprout those, and then months would pass before they finished coming in.
The boys also had a lot of ear infections….very few of which involved colds, fevers, or ANY pulling on the ears. Just general miserableness and lots of screaming.
Hopefully things settle down for you soon. I know that sleep deprivation was my biggest issue at that age, and I’m just NOT a nice person on too little sleep. Will be thinking of you and wishing for the return of sweet sleeping Addie!