-Henry was introduced to his blanket at about 3 months old. I read in one of my parenting magazines that giving the child a "lovey" would help the child learn to sleep on his own while transitioning from Mama and Papa's bed to his crib. 3 months was pretty young to start the process, but we were desperately searching for any way to move Henry from sleeping on Mama's chest on the sofa to his own bed in his own room. With high hopes and tired bodies we also bought two other blankets exactly the same as the original-one for Gigi house and one to be saved as a back-up should the original blanket ever get lost. We would wrap him up in it every time that he went down for a nap, put it over our shoulder during story time or while we were rocking him to sleep. We would drive all the way back across town if we forgot it. We took it to all Henry's doctors appointments, visits with friends, the store...Well, in the end the magic blanket fell short in it's role as a "transition object from bed to crib" and I spent another 3 months on the sofa with Henry on my chest. But, Henry has definitely developed a strong bond to his blanket and while it may not have taken him from Mama's chest to the crib, it has an important role in bedtime/naptime rituals in our house. See, the blanket is a measure stick, an indicator of Henry's level of tiredness. Most parents can relate the small window of time you have to put your child to bed without a messy 45 minute ordeal. We have developed a method for determining Henry's tiredness level. Step 1: notice the child is rubbing his eyes, yawning or just generally slowing down Step 2: take blanket from crib and hang in front of child's face Step 3: watch reaction of child. Child may a) bat blanky away like an annoying fly and cackle as if to say "Ha! Go ahead and try to put me to sleep, I'll lay in bed and cry for 20 minutes and not take an afternoon nap either". b) grab blanket and rub his face, this is the sweet spot, the window is wide open-jump in and put your baby into bed c) grab blanket, throw himself on the floor, roll around chewing on blanket-walk don't run into the bed room and put child in crib, walk away quickly being sure not to make a sound and then stand outside the door praying that the window has not closed and you have not enter the dangerous land of "The Over Tired Child" (sorry, can you tell I have been studying all day for a statistics final?)
So, with that long winded introduction let me get to the meat of the story. It's Tuesday afternoon and Henry is at his Gigi's house. He's had lunch and my Mom puts him down on the floor to play while she cleans up. It's early in the afternoon, Henry is a good two hours from a nap but she noticed he was yawning a little during lunch. My Mom sits down on the floor to play with him but he gets up and walks into the kitchen. He comes back into the living room with the kitchen towel hanging out of his mouth and lays down on floor and tries to put himself to sleep. If we had only known that a dish towel was the secret. I think I'll write a strongly worded email to Parents magazine. :)
-On Thursday I arrived a little early to drop Henry off. Usually when I get there Mom is sitting on the sofa drinking coffee and reading the paper and usually Henry goes around the room touching everything that he knows he is not supposed to while we run frantically to remove any safety hazard below 3 feet. Well, this day Mom was upstairs and her coffee cup was sitting, full, on the table. I didn't notice. I put Henry down, took off his coat and hat and walked into the kitchen to put down his things on the counter. After a minute I notice Henry was making a weird sound so I turned around and saw him. He was standing next to the table, his hand less then an inch from the coffee mug, patting the table and looking at me saying "ehhh, ehhh, ehhh" which apparently translates into "Mama this is not supposed to be here and I am having a very hard time resisting grabbing it and dumping it on the floor." :)
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