Sympathy for the Vivi

Vivi, Vivi, Vivi. She loves doors, doorknobs, locks, keys – all that stuff. Today, in a necessary advancement of her portal-related skills, she locked herself in the bathroom. Shannon immediately called me, but managed to jimmy the door open just after I picked up.

That’s the least of her trubs right now, though. Bedtime is the worst, for everyone. I can feel my heart rate increase around seven, when we start giving her the ten- and five-minute warnings about bedtime, and even Julia often gets edgy. Usually, nowadays, Vivi holds it together pretty well for most of the routine. She says night-night to her mom and sister, sits quietly in my lap for a story or two (not even asking, much, anymore, for a third or fourth or nth story), and then asks for her two nighttime songs: “Doo-Doo Uppa Ba Ba,” which translates into English as “Twinkle Twinkle” (the “uppa ba ba” part is her attempt to say her favorite line, “Up above the world so high”), and “Ba Be Bee Bee,” a.k.a., “Rockabye Baby.”

After hearing those in my mellifluous falsetto, she snuggles into her pile of stuffed animals – including, most importantly, the quartet of Ung, Dub-Ya, Biggie, and Munnie (her silky, her bear, Piggie, and Bunny), and asks for “dewwow” and “ink,” her yellow and pink blankets. I put those over her, and then head for the door. Roundabout the time my hand touches the knob, she starts the screaming, and doesn’t let up for the next ten, fifteen, thirty minutes. As Shannon might have said, lo those many days ago when she still blogged, “Not. Pleasant.”

Today, though, things were worse than usual because, first, she threw her stuffed-animal friends out of bed, and then, after I retrieved them, refused to lie down, saying over and over, “Bet! Bet! Bet!” I was mystified, until, disgusted with me, she patted her bottom and shrieked it at me – she was saying “Wet! Wet!” She’s increasingly interested in potty training, and now suddenly can’t stand to be wet. So while Julia crawled into her own bed, I changed Vivi’s diaper and settled her into her crib again. Five minutes later, she was out.

Vivi, Vivi, Vivi. She is a handful – or two, or four – but I feel for her. Her reach so exceeds her grasp, she can’t help but be mad at the world, and most of us in it.

4 thoughts on “Sympathy for the Vivi”

  1. That age can be so difficult, but as you know, it will pass. Sounds to me like once she’s able to communicate more of the complex ideas in her head, her frustration will decrease. Hang in there!

  2. Our middle one was a non-stop screamer. “Colicky” until she hit about 2, and then just hyper-sensitive until 7…

    Sounds like the crying is partly just routine – what she feels like she should be doing – partly because she is filled with existential dread; staring into the great void of her life and asking, “Is that all there is?”

    All kidding aside, it’s painfully difficult, but you have to detach from it somewhat. There’s such a blurry line between comforting and assisting with legitimate needs and enabling demanding or inappropriate behavior.

    Almost impossibly blurry. It’s messy, and no one gets it “right.”

    It sucks. It sucks ass.

    It might even suck double-ass.

    Perversely though, if you believe you’re getting it right, you are; because she’ll become convinced that everything is o.k.

    Parents are all fascists in that way, and children are their willing proles.

    I should write parenting advice columns…

  3. Yes! Brendon! You should! At least she isn’t usually screaming for 45-60 minutes at a time every bedtime like she was last month. I mean, sometimes she does, but usually it’s shorter than that these days. Progress.

  4. (adopts British accent)… we used to dream of only an hour of screamin’!…. (drops British accent)

    A lot of it will disappear with language acquisition, of course, and then persist in new form for sixteen more years until logic acquisition grabs hold around nineteen or twenty.

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