We are being terrorized.
Every night this week, Elizabeth has woken up screaming in terror and tried to get into bed with us.
Finally on Wednesday I had had enough of that and tried to get her to sleep in her room. Yeah right. She pleaded and screamed and begged to not have to sleep in her bed. After an HOUR (which at 2 am is a long time) I gave up and made her dad take over. Grumbling.
He gave up much quicker, and I woke up in the morning to find them both sleeping on the couch.
So I asked Elizabeth that morning what was scaring her.
"The click-clock," she said.
The click-clock? Hmm.
"What does the click-clock do?" I asked her.
"It makes sounds," she said.
"What kinds of sounds does it make?"
"It makes noise."
Hmmmmm.
I asked her where is the click-clock and she pointed under her bed.
So I moved her bed. And all the other furniture in her room. My thought was, if the "click-clock" was a tapping water pipe under the bed, maybe moving it would make it harder to hear. I also gave her a spritz bottle of "Click-Clock Killing Spray" that we sprayed all over her room to get rid of the click-clock, whatever it is.
When I told her dad about the click-clock under the bed, he said that she had told him the same thing, a noisy soundmaker under her bed.
Bob thought it might be a cricket. I alternatively suggested it might be the tree outside her window that knocks into the gutter when it's windy. He thought it could be the nautical clock hanging in our dining room. We were stumped.
Last night was the first night with the new furniture configuration.
She did not wake up screaming. She did not try to climb into our bed at 2 am. When I woke up with Dylan at 5:30 am I peeked into her room and I swear I saw her laying in bed sleeping. I must have been half-asleep because it turns out, she was not there.
At 5:35 am, Elizabeth started crying. Bob got out of bed and came into the hallway near the kids' rooms.
"Where is she?" he asked me.
"She's not in her room?" I asked him back.
He went through the house, trying to locate the source of the crying, and eventually found her curled up on some pillows underneath the living room windows. The OPEN living room windows.
Apparently, she had slept there.
We asked her why she left her room and she told us:
"I'm afraid of the click-clock."
ARGH!
Suggestions welcome.
PS: On an unrelated note, in my quest to become the poor-mans Britney Spears, I took my kids to Walmart yesterday where Elizabeth FELL OUT OF THE CART in the bedding section. Just plopped right out of the cart and onto the floor. Some woman heard her cry and turned around and gave me the "bad mother bad mother" look...but, it wasn't MY fault Elizabeth launched herself like a rocket toward the electronics section.
She was undamaged in the fall and later led her cousin on a wild chase through the menswear section to prove her enduring fitness. It was fun.
9 comments:
Have you tried sleeping in her room at night to see if you can ID the sound?
I think I might have to tonight. This is making me nuts.
Did she watch anything scary on TV recently?
Ask her to show you where the click clock is again, then you pretend you see it, and proceed to exterminate it with all your might."See, Click Clock is gone"
Good luck.
The scariest thing she's seen lately is "So You Think You Can Dance" though admittedly, one of those chicks was QUITE frightening. Good thing she was eliminated.
The bad mother look. *lol* When Athena was young, I used to get the "Where is your wife and why are you alone with a child" look all the time. Either that or "Aren't you such a great dad" condescending look.
I would hang out in her room and try to ID it.
Oh yes, anytime a father has taken his child out of the house alone, without wifely support, he is deemed heroic, nay, godlike.
It's such crap. You know what's heroic, taking a 2-year-old and a 5-month-old on a whirlwind spree of errands including paying the electric bill, taking a package to the post office, going to the bank and grocery shopping. Rinse, repeat once a week.
That's heroic.
It's a miracle I haven't been worn down completely by demands for toys, chocolate milk, chicken nuggets and in the case of the baby, a boob. NOW!
I did still feel bad that I allowed my daughter to tumble to the dirty Walmart floor. Ah well.
You might try a tape recorder to see if you can capture the sound in the room.
Another suggestion would be a white noise generator, like a fan. Scared kids will use their imagination to hear things in the quiet of the night.
I tipped a cart with my sister in it as well, but it landed on ME. (Isn't that just always the way?) It scared my mom so badly that she spanked me. Sort of that same feeling she must have gotten when I would come home late as a teen... "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?! I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD! I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!"
Anyway, until you drop a child, you are not a parent. And them dropping themselves does count.
Cart-tipping your sibling is more common than I thought.
Post a Comment