Teeth and Togas

This is what happens when your child runs out of clothes in her daycare cubby... She comes home dressed in a makeshift toga t-shirt dress (that secretly I think is kind of cute). Obviously I'm not winning any mom of the year points any time soon, as she came home wearing these clothes, different diapers (ours leak, apparently, hence the outfit change) and a hair do-over. Oops. What can I say, it's been quite the week.

In other daycare news... Matt picked her up the other day and had to sign an incident report because, it turns out, our child is the toddler room biter. I hang my head in shame. I was mortified when I found out. I've been warned to expect the biting incident reports, but I really thought Violet would be the victim, not the bully. I guess having to stand up to four older boys next door is resulting in some not-so-nice behavior. The teachers were very nice about it and didn't seem to blame Violet overly. The general consensus is that she's teething, and just happened to get a little frustrated with one of her friends. Today they talked at length about using words instead of teeth, and we jumped on the lectures at home. Here's hoping it was a one-time deal.

And speaking of teeth, they may the culprit, or we may just be entering the Terrible Twos a few months early, but Violet here has been quite the pill when it comes to sleeping. Girlfriend has been waking up at 5:30 or earlier every day for the past week and a half. Couple that with a bedtime battle of wills the likes of which have never been seen in this house before, and you have quite a stressful situation. Where my angel used to go agreeably to bed every night and not make a peep, now we spend the better part of an hour listening to her scream or whine as we cajole and grit our teeth. The last straw came when she went to bed late (after a marathon fuss-tacular) and woke up at 1:30, stayed up for an hour, and still got up before 6 a.m. Not. Cool.

I was complaining in the teacher's breakroom this week and someone mentioned a Super Nanny technique that I promptly went home and tried. Because that's how desperate I am. It works like this: Violet gets in bed and then I sit on the floor, in the dark (because I've also banished the nightlight as a possible culprit), with my back turned. Then slowly, I scoot myself out the door. Sounds ridiculous. But I was willing to try anything that didn't involved either of us ending in tears. And by golly if Super Nanny didn't have it right! It worked like a charm! Whereas before Violet would freak if I so much as sneezed in the general direction of the door, this time there was barely a whimper out of her. And she stayed asleep all night, and didn't stir until 6. Thank. God. Six is still too early, but at least it's after my alarm has gone off. It's still not a perfect solution, but I doubt anything about our lives are going to be perfect for a while, if we really are entering the Twos. Maybe our pediatrician will have a magic solution at Violet's 18-month well-check this afternoon. Fingers crossed!