The witching hour

I’ve heard a lot of parents lamenting that time of day when their kids tend to go a little more berserk than normal. It’s apparently usually late afternoon or early evening, and it always seems to happen around the time said parents are trying to get dinner made and on the table.

And I’ve always secretly heaved a sigh of relief that D doesn’t really have one. A witching hour, that is. She’s normally very cheery and playful when we get home from daycare, ready to eat soon after we arrive, then happy to play around in her toy area for most of the night until bedtime.

Bedtime can be another story, but when that happens it’s usually because she’s too tired and doesn’t want to trust me that she’s ready to sleep. Silly girl, still hasn’t learned that Mommy knows best, even when she screams otherwise.

Unfortunately, we seem to have discovered her witching hour this week, on the dawn of her 20 month birthday. And how lucky are we? It occurs at 2am. Whee!

The past 2 nights she has awoken in fits of howling right around that time. Did she hear a noise? Did she have a bad dream? Did she just want to rebel against the rest of our world who likes to SLEEP at that hour of night?

Now, she did start a cold on Sunday that has progressed over the past 2 days, so there is that aspect, but still. 2 nights in a row? That’s a little much, my dear. She might average waking once a week or so, but rarely on consecutive nights.

And last night was awful. The sleeping cough she almost always gets with her colds began, so I knew it was probably going to be a rough go. Little did I know that she would wake approximately 78 times between 2-4am. That was great fun.

Poor R is suffering through the adult version of D’s cold right now, and he even got up to help with her fits last night. We took turns, alternating shifts. He gave her some baby Tylenol at one point, but I’m not sure how much it helped. I was trying to magically plug my ears and pretend there was not a wailing child in the house.

So, all this to say, I’m tired. We got a brand new mattress set this weekend, and I’m now 0-2 on nights enjoying it. The thing is an absolute monster – king size pillow-top, and my feet don’t even touch the ground when I sit on the side of it! It’s taller than D now too, so she gets frustrated that she can’t pull herself up on it like she could on our old one.

I envisioned nights of sweet, cushioned, squeak-less slumber, but instead I’ve been greeted with incessant toddler screams and ghosts of pre-dawn terrors.

I do feel terrible for D – you can tell she’s uncomfortable and it took everything I had to wake her up this morning when it was time to get ready for school. But I really hope tonight is better.

Maybe this is payback for inwardly thanking my lucky stars that we don’t have that late-day witching hour. Because if I had to choose between 4pm and 2am, I’d happily say BRING IT ON 4PM!!