Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

I noticed tonight that the three year old’s teeth are really grody. We have to practically tie her up in order to brush them and she whips her head back and forth and so the job never gets done very well. It’s showing now because she’s got more tartar than Red Lobster. I had a sneaking suspicion that having her pacifier (or as she calls it, her “two-tattie”) at night was exascerbating the situation, so I took matters into my own hands and went and cut off the entire end of the damned thing and casually left it in her bed like nothing ever happened.

When she went up to bed she was not impressed, to say the least. Her two-tattie was broken, and she wanted someone’s head for it. I asked if she wanted it and she thrust it away, haughtily as a nouveau riche Frenchman who’s been offered wine from a box. So we read a story and said prayers and kissed goodnight and I went downstairs and waited for the other shoe to drop.

Which it did, with a thud. On the monitor I heard statements like “I want another two-tattie”. “This is no good”, “This one is broken”, and “Please, I can’t go to sleep”, gradually increasing in intensity until I felt her pain in every fiber of my mommy-like being.

I went upstairs to her and told her I was very sorry that her two-tattie was broken and that they were out of them at the store; did she think it would help if I sat on her bed with her and read my book and watched her while she fell asleep? She agreed that she thought it would help, and so I settled in with Bridget Jones’s Diary (excellent book, that) and laid there reading while she occasionally snaked out a hand to pat my arm or touch my hair, reassuring herself that I was still with her, until she fell deeply asleep.

Posted Kids |