Maybe The Sandman Is Hiding Out At A Baitshop. That Lazy Bastard.

When I was fairly young, my family used to go to the video rental store (which also doubled as a bait shop) on Friday nights to rent movies.  Why yes, I’m old AND from from the sticks.

In addition to the movie, I got to rent a video game for our Atari, and later on, Nintendo game system.  No, not Super Nintendo. No, not Nintendo 64 (Hmmm...I just seem to be aging myself further, here.)  Nintendo.  And Atari.

 If you guessed the blobs were malignant tumors, you'd be almost right.

One of my fondest memories (besides the strange olfactory combination of electronics and fish), is waking up at 6:00 Saturday and Sunday mornings, and having the video game all to myself for a couple hours.  Even then, the quiet of the house in the morning before the other inhabitants awoke, was blissful.

That’s right. I used to be a morning person.  A REAL morning person.  At every sleepover party, I was the kid up at six am, talking to some one’s poor haggard mother while all the other girls slept until ten in the morning.  I had trouble waiting until an appropriate hour to run over to Best Friend’s house to play every day.  I saw the sun rise on a regular basis, for no reason at all.

Fast forward ten years, and things started to change.  Every sixteen year old can sleep in, at least until 9:00, without too much effort. 

And by the time I got to college, I was a normal human being.  I had to set the alarm to be up before 8:00 am.  And I could nap - anywhere and everywhere.  The rules of napping in public don’t seem to apply to college students, at least not in my college town.

 

If they didn’t want people sleeping in their shops, they should 

take away the comfy armchairs and anything decaf.

All of this just to say, Toddler doesn’t sleep any more.  She used to sleep through the night, maybe waking up for a bottle if she wasn’t feeling so good, or if she failed to eat her bedtime snack.

But since she started getting her molars, she’s been up several times a night, usually insisting on a sippy cup of milk before going back down.  And by insisting, I mean screaming.  No, making that SCREAMING.

Worst part is, though this has been going on for a month or two, there’s no end in sight.  Homegirl is the slowest teether ever.  Seriously, she’s eighteen months, and only has nine teeth.

We’ve tried replacing milk in the sippy with water, and good old “cry-it-out.”  All this results in nothing but night after night of screaming so loud it wakes up the entire household.

So, faithful readers, any suggestions?  Because the Sandman has gon' fishin' and doesn’t seem to be returning any time soon.