Turns out, there was a progress report, letting me know that Kaylee has mastered certain skills like seating herself in a chair, building a tower of three to four cubes (I didn’t know she could do that), and climbing stairs on her hands and knees.  There was also a list of “emerging skills” such as naming three objects, pointing to four body parts, and “increased dependence on mother during walking stage.”  Oh wait, I think we’ve already arrived at that last one, seeing as how she won’t let me set her down to take off my shoes in the evening.

And then the teacher told me this story, when I mentioned that Kaylee has also already mastered the “increased resistance to bedtime” skill:  When it’s time for a nap and Kaylee’s lying on her mat, she will sometimes lift her head up, look around and then start to get up.  Her teacher then tells her to lie down, and she does, but then she starts peeking again.

My reaction to this story: SHE CAN GET KAYLEE TO LIE DOWN???  Are there chains involved?  Sleeping pills?  Some sort of sorcery?

I must learn this magic.

I’ve mentioned before that Kaylee gets more injuries now that she’s mobile, but so far she hadn’t done anything that really made my heart jump up into my throat and threaten to vacate my body.  That changed on Saturday.

We were over at my parents’ house celebrating Rob’s birthday (Happy Birthday, darlin’), and Kaylee and her cousins, Hope and Evie, wanted to spend pretty much all of their time in the backyard.  We happily obliged.

My parents have little toddler-size chairs in the yard, and Kaylee is kind of fascinated with them, climbing all over them every chance she gets.  So Saturday, she sat in one of those chairs for about a second and a half — which is roughly the limit of her attention span — and then decided to get down.  She scooted to the edge of the chair … and then didn’t get her feet under her before she fell forward out of the chair.  She landed on the concrete patio, directly on her head.

I went into full Mommy action mode then, and I scooped her up before she even had time to realize that she should start crying.  Once the crying started, I expected it to last for, well, forever, but she stopped after a couple of minutes and then got annoyed with me for trying to put a cool cloth on her new injury.  Within a few minutes, she was in the backyard playing again, doing her best to get dirt in the road rash wound.

Now that we’d established that we weren’t on our way to the emergency room, another fear surfaced: Kaylee looked like someone had beaten the you-know-what out of her.  (She was also sporting a bruise next to her eye from an accident at daycare.)  Could we go out in public without getting arrested?

So far we’ve managed to take her to a restaurant, the grocery store, the mall and Best Buy without being stopped by authorities.  We’ll see how the rest of the week goes.

The injury:

So, to make this Monday morning a little bit brighter, here are some cute photos from Kaylee’s cousins’ birthday party this weekend.  (Kaylee got to play on a SLIDE!  And pet a CAT!  She was very happy.)  Enjoy, and good luck making it to Friday.

A few years ago, before Kaylee was even an idea, I wrote an article for Pikes Peak Parent about getting your child to sleep through the night.  As often happens when I volunteer to write a story, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.  Who knew that SLEEP could be such a controversial topic?  I learned all about The Ferber Method and its critics,  I talked to moms who let their babies “cry it out,” and I talked to moms who said it’s cruel not to go to your child when she’s upset, suggesting even that babies who allowed to cry themselves to sleep will no longer trust their parents.

And then there’s the internet research, which exposed me to message boards on the topic.  As you can imagine, that’s where the arguments get heated and people back up their viewpoints passionately, and with insults.

So what I’m saying is, sleep is apparently a big deal.

Being childless at the time, I sighed and shook my head, and made a plan for how I would handle my own kid one day.  Of course I would let her cry it out — the earlier the better.  Obviously.

I was an idiot.

I completely underestimated how strong the soothing instinct is.  If my daughter is crying, I need to hold her.  End of story.

Thus, we’ve been rocking Kaylee to sleep every night for the past 13 and a half months.  When she wakes up in the middle of the night — which luckily, isn’t that often — we rock her back to sleep.  There hadn’t been many drawn-out sleep battles, and Kaylee has generally drifted off within a few minutes of being handed a bottle.  I considered us pretty lucky.

Until this week.

A switch has been flipped in my daughter, and I really wish I knew where it was so I could flip it back.  She has suddenly decided that sleep is her mortal enemy and she wants nothing to do with it.  Ever.  As soon as she realizes that I’m planning to put her to bed, the shrieking starts, and it doesn’t stop for hours.  Last night, I spent about an hour trying to get her to sleep, and then Rob took over and spent almost as much time trying, with Kaylee screaming the whole time.

And finally, we did it.  We left her in her crib (after goodnight kisses, of course) and we let her cry.  And cry.  And cry.

We attempted to eat dinner and watch TV, but it’s awfully hard to enjoy those things when your child is sobbing in the other room.

About four years later, she fell asleep, and she slept soundly for the rest of the night.

This next part is going to sound silly to people who aren’t parents, but that doesn’t make it any less true:  When I went to get Kaylee out of bed this morning, I was actually nervous.  Would she be angry with me?  Would she hold a grudge?  Or worse, would she have a look of sadness and betrayal in those big eyes?

But she was fine, more or less.  She mostly just wanted out of her crib.  She was clingier than she normally is when she wakes up, and when I took a shower she stood outside the bathroom door and sobbed, despite Rob’s attempts to distract her.

So the results were mixed.  She did fall asleep on her own, but she didn’t simply forget about it in the morning.  She slept soundly through the night, but then she wanted her mommy to hold her non-stop all day.  (Which leads right back into a mommy-guilt trap, since I had to drop her off at daycare this morning.)

Will we do it again tonight?

Sigh.

Yes, we will, and we’ll continue to do it until she’s comfortable falling asleep on her own.  We’ve come to the conclusion that we’re not being fair to ourselves when we spend two or three hours every night just trying to get Kaylee to sleep.

We may be headed into a rough weekend.

A side note:  Kaylee doesn’t say “Mama” very often, and usually reserves it for moments of distress.  She’ll say “Dada” all day, for fun, but “Mama” is saved for the times when she needs something, and it is said in the most pathetic voice possible.  So it’s a special kind of torture when you decide to let your child cry, and she stands there calling “Mamamamamama” in a tone of utter despair.  Just FYI.

On Sunday, I turned on the Disney Channel so Kaylee and I could watch “My Friends Tigger and Pooh” together, and somehow the TV stayed on that channel all day.

It is now Thursday. The TV is still on the Disney Channel. I have now watched multiple episodes of “The Wizards of Waverly Place,” “Hannah Montana,” “That’s So Raven” and “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.”

And I’ve enjoyed them.

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?

You’re on the phone to social services now, aren’t you?

In my defense, she only got her first tooth at about 10 or 11 months, and her second tooth only appeared a couple of weeks ago, so I’ve only been neglecting her dental health for two or three months.  And not out of any sort of malice — I just didn’t think about it.  Our family routine hadn’t gotten beyond changing into jammies and giving kisses at bedtime, and it wasn’t until my editor sent me a press release about an infant toothbrush that I suddenly realized that I am a terrible mother.

Anyway, I bought Kaylee a toothbrush and some kiddie toothpaste yesterday, and I prepared myself for battle.  This kid has gotten very vocal about her likes and dislikes lately, and I was prepared to be clawed when I attempted to put the toothbrush in her mouth.  I briefly considered changing into a sweatshirt in order to shield my arms from her wrath, but we don’t have air conditioning and yesterday was pretty warm.  So I took my chances.

I decided the best strategy would be to let her sit with her feet in the bathroom sink, because she thinks this is one of the best places in the house to hang out.  From there she can laugh at that funny-looking kid in the mirror, and she can open the medicine cabinet and proceed to scatter its contents throughout the house.

So I set her in the sink, and she was instantly happy.  Score one for me.

I put a dab of toothpaste on the brush, which she promptly knocked out of my hand, smearing toothpaste on the counter.  Score one for her.

Time to start over.  I put another dab of toothpaste on the brush, stuck it in her mouth and brushed her tiny little teeth.  Then, the most amazing thing happened: She smiled.  Beyond all reasonable expectations, she actually appeared to be enjoying herself.  Score 25 for me.

She let me brush all over her gums, and then she even took the toothbrush from me and moved it around in her mouth for a little while.  I began to envision the years ahead of her, full of perfect dental hygiene and empty of nighttime battles over brushing her teeth.  Life was good.

And then I decided that tooth-brushing time was over, and that it was time to set the toothbrush down.  I knew she’d prefer to bring the toothbrush into the living room with her to play with, but I had a feeling that her “playing” would involve brushing (a) the dogs’ hair or (b) the dogs’ teeth.

So I took the toothbrush from her, set it on the counter and carried her to her room.

That’s when the screaming started.

And continued for an hour.

Then it stopped for about 10 minutes.

Then started up again.

For another hour.

Score one billion for her.

While there, I noticed something a little bit sad:  I’ve suddenly become old.

I blame Kaylee.

Those of you who haven’t been to an amusement park lately may not be aware that such places carry the not-at-all-subtle vibe of a teenage meat market.  It’s a little like hanging out at the mall on a weekend.  All the teenagers show up, girls dressed in their short shorts and barely existent tank tops, faces hiding under an inch of makeup, and they cast sidelong glances at all the other teenagers. The girls are judging the other girls and watching the boys, while the boys are trying to act macho and impress the girls by letting their pants droop low enough to show off their boxers.

Gosh, that paragraph was full of judgment, wasn’t it?

When I was a kid, I think I looked at those teenage girls with a certain amount of awe, wishing I could hairspray my hair straight up into the air, just like those sophisticated girls surrounding me.  (This was the late ’80s, early ’90s, by the way.)  They were the pinnacle of beauty, and I aspired to be just like them.

As a teenager, I viewed those girls with jealousy and/or disdain, depending on my mood.  Sometimes I wanted to be like them, and sometimes I just found them really annoying.  And sometimes, being a teenager myself, I’d go ahead and make the effort to look “pretty,” and I’d do a little bit (ok, a lot) of boy-watching myself.

As a young adult, I progressed to full-on disdain.  I thought the girls with the makeup and the obvious desire to impress the boys were simply pathetic and loathsome, and I was so glad I’d grown out of that phase.  Because, ugh, who wants to spend their lives mired in teenage girldom?  That period of life is much too dramatic, so thank god it was over.

And now, as an adult and a parent, I look at those girls and I am horrified.  Because my only thought is this: Someday, that will be Kaylee.

Unless I enact my backup plan, which is to lock her up in her room for the next 20 years.

But I’ve had a good reason for not replacing that photo: I didn’t have other pictures of me and Kaylee. Seriously. I’m usually the one behind the camera, so photos of the two of us are few and far between.

So today, I offer this photo as evidence that I am capable of handing the camera to someone else, and that I do occasionally interact with my daughter, rather than spending all of my time taking her picture:

Today is Friday the 13th, which you will learn is supposedly an unlucky day on which you must avoid black cats, walking under ladders and some other stuff. I’m pointing this out because one day your birthday will be on a Friday the 13th, and I’m already thinking about throwing you a themed birthday party. Let’s see … it looks like I have until 2011 to make plans. Three years is a good amount of time to give me to plan a party, as I am very bad at planning parties. You’ll have to check your 48-month letter to see how it went.

This month has been a good one in the McDonnell household, with every single day including at least one moment when your dad and I look at each other and one of us says, “I love this kid.” You’ve gotten so much more active and interesting in the past month, and you do something new almost every day. Yesterday, you surprised me by taking off into the backyard, apparently having forgotten that the grass in our backyard is your mortal enemy. Will this be a new phase in baby-wrangling for us? Probably. We also might need to be a little more punctual about poop-scooping the yard, given your penchant for picking things up off the ground and putting them in your mouth.

You’ve also become quite the little “helper” around the house, particularly with the laundry. When I bring a basket of clean clothes into your room, you immediately grab shirts, wad them up and put them in your dresser drawer. Not that that’s where they go, but I appreciate the effort. Sometimes you can’t even wait for laundry day to start on the chores, and I’ll find macaroni-and-cheese encrusted pants stuck in a drawer with your clean clothes.

Probably the biggest change in your life this month has been the switch to a new daycare center. I was prepared for a seriously traumatic experience, in which you would cling to me every morning and scream for me to take you back home. But that didn’t happen, not even once. You actually handled the move to the new daycare better than you handled the move from the infant room to the toddler room at the old daycare. I guess you’ve made an impression, too, because the teachers keep telling me, “We just love her. She’s always so happy!” And in the mornings, one teacher makes a beeline for you every day so she can hold you. I’m proud of you for handling the change so well.

And you’ve started testing your parents, checking to see what we’ll let you get away with and how serious we are when we say “no.” Sometimes when we’re sitting around the table at dinner, I’ll look over to see you slowly moving your sippy cup to the edge of your highchair tray, watching me to see what I’ll do. When I give you a warning look and tell you “no,” you often smile mischievously and drop the sippy cup anyway. You usually throw in an “uh-oh” to make it look like an accident, but we’re on to you.

I’ve also learned that I can’t manipulate you nearly as well as you manipulate me. Last night, I was trying to get you to stop stuffing your face with macaroni and cheese long enough to try some of the other things on your plate. So I picked up a piece of hot dog, ate it and enthusiastically said, “Mmmm!” When you picked up a piece of hot dog and ate it, I thought I had figured out a good strategy. So I ate a green bean, said, “Mmmm!” and waited for you to follow suit. Instead, you picked up a green bean and offered it to me, since I seemed to like them so much. Well played, little girl.

Your dad and I have agreed that this is by far your best age yet, because you’re doing so much and changing so much. We can’t wait for you to start talking more, because we know you’ve got some amusing thoughts rattling around in your cute little head. You’re so interested in the world around you now, and we’re thinking of all the places we can take you to show you everything there is to see. If you had any idea how lazy and home-bound your dad and I are, you’d realize what an accomplishment that really is.

Love,

Mommy

She’s trying a number of new things, but the most obnoxious is the hitting.  She’ll occasionally just smack me on the arm or the chest or wherever, just to see what I’ll do.  The smack is often followed by a sideways glance and a half-smile, as if she’s waiting to see what I think of her new trick.  And to be honest, I don’t have a consistent response.  Sometimes I just ignore it because it doesn’t hurt, and sometimes I tell her “no” and try to look stern.

Worse than that, though, is that she now slaps at almost everything she’s offered.  If you try to hand her a piece of food that she deems unworthy of her, she smacks it to the floor before you can blink.  Then she seems indignant that your psychic powers have waned to the point that you can’t tell she wants Cheerios and not a pancake.  (“Oh my god, Mommy, don’t you KNOW that I don’t want oranges?  Life is so FRUSTRATING.”)

Along the same lines, she’s recently decided that she wants her dinner taken away the very second she’s done eating.  Thus, if we haven’t realized that THIS bite of bread is the last one she plans to eat, she will promptly pick up the plate and attempt to throw it on the floor.  We usually notice in time and take the plate away before she rains down macaroni and fruit on the dogs’ heads.

So, our typical strategy is to take away things that she’s using to cause trouble.  If she’s about to throw her plate on the floor, we take away the plate.  If she’s hitting me with a sandbox shovel, I take away the shovel, and so on.

Last night, Rob was sitting with her at dinner while I went to start Kaylee’s bath, and Kaylee started screaming and yelling to be taken out of her highchair.  He wanted her to stay where she was until the bath was ready, because she happened to be quite sticky.  He insisted on sticking to his guns.

She calmed down for a moment, and then started smacking at her food, which was sitting directly on the highchair tray, and was amusingly splashy.

Time to take the food away… by taking her out of her high chair.

“Ah,” said Rob.  “She got me.”

She’s a crafty little devil.