MyThreeDaughters

See that nuclear warning siren there? That’s the approximate equivalent of hearing a baby cry. At least one of ours. Number one was loud, which she passed onto two, and so three can bring on the noise, too.
Since three was born last May, tonight marks approximately 14 and a half months since anybody in this family has slept through the night.
Oh, right, there was this one night when three’s (let’s call her Rose, her middle name) had a cut on her tongue and my wife asked if we should give her Benadryl. My wife mixed up some Benadryl and Tums, as I pretended to carefully calculate the appropriate dosage, while inside my brain was screaming, “YES, YES, YES! Put her under like she’s having surgery!” That night, Rose slept all night, and that’s the one and only night she’s ever done it.
One time, since last May.
We’ve been holding off on “letting her cry it out,” because my wife keeps saying she’s getting teeth in.
“I think I see a white splotch under the gum,” she’ll say, so maybe we shouldn’t do it yet.
We wait five months…tooth comes in.
“I think she’s getting her one-year molars,” wife says, so we shouldn’t do it yet.
Molar appears.
“I think she might be getting ready to have her wisdom teeth out,” wife says (oops, made that one up).
So at this point, it’s not just wife and myself who have added rows of character lines under our eyes, but Fontaine came down this morning looking like she’d been on the wrong end of a bar fight.
What comes next is highly controversial. But, at some point, you got to let a baby cry it out. Get the idea that he or she (what am I talking about, always a “she” with us), that she can’t just scream and get Mommy in there. Some people favor the Dr. Sears method of swooping right in there and trying to get her back to sleep. Others go with the famous and infamous Ferberization.
You can go with what you want, but one thing you can’t go without? SLEEP!
Fontaine, the six-year-old, has therefore packed her bags, and her mattress and 19 stuffed dolls that are her “children,” and is sleeping tonight in the walk-in closet in our room. Not by happenstance, that closet is as far away from Rose she could go in the house without actually being outside.
To boot, she’s got an air filter running in there, and insisted that the closet door be fully closed before I left.
I’m surprised she didn’t ask me to perforate her ear drums as a precaution.
To be honest, it looked kind of cozy, and just before I walked out, I took a good look at leftover floor space.
I’m thinking before the screamfest is over tonight, she might have some company.