Last night Cael decided to up the ante a notch. His recent campaign to completely grind his parents down to malleable blobs of goo from which he can extract money, attention and junk food by simply threatening to turn on the whine has been going on for about a month or more now. I am happy to say that he has been basically unsuccessful to date. He is sensing this, we think and last night he tried something new.

Bedtime was uneventful, peaceful even. Until 4:30am, that is. He opened his door and began his demands; a drink of water, more kisses, change me, fix my flashlight, etc. Each time Nikki or I got out of bed, helped him out and put him back into bed. After 3 minutes (or exactly long enough to find your comfy spot again and start to drift off) he would open the door and ask for the next thing. Finally this predictable cycle peaks at around 5:10am when I get out of bed to help him with his latest demand (to take his t-shirt off). The problem he has with this one is that he asked Mommy to come and help him, not Dad. This tips him over the precipice into a howling rage that I respond to by just plunking him back into his bed for the millionth time and closing the door. As I head back to bed, by now completely awake and trying to control my own temper, I pull our own door so that it’s only open about a foot. When he opens the door next (in about 45 seconds flat) so that we can hear him scream better, the sight of our bedroom door sends him to new heights of rage. We decide to take the high road and remain completely silent and try to wait him out. He screeched for about 7 or 8 minutes, yelled for another 5, and then spent about 10 minutes doing his best Stewie impression from Family Guy:

Mom, take my t-shirt off.

Mommy, take my t-shirt off.

Take my t-shirt off.

Take my t-shirt, off.

Take my t-shirt off.

Take my t-shirt off.

Take my t-shirt off.

Mom.

Mom

Momma

Mum.

And so on. It took him a remarkable 25 minutes to become bored of this routine after which he played quietly in his room until he fell back asleep.  Never let it be said that he doesn’t have an attention span….

Wish us luck on the next few months, ’cause I think we are going to need it.