After a good two weeks of boogering it up big time, our little sweet face is (maybe -- no jinxes!) back to her old sweet self. We had been enduring wall-to-wall tantrums and hitting. (It's not that she was getting away with it; it's just that punishments didn't phase her. At all.)
We had fallen away from saying her bedtime prayers with her -- I know! Bad momma! -- partly because she's young and it'll be a little bit before she's able to say them with us, but mostly because we just weren't prioritizing it. Bad momma.
Last night, I plunked her in her crib after she smacked me in the face with both hands simultaneously at bedtime. I was so mad at her. Because she knew she was being punished, she refused all of her nighttime accoutrements: pacifier, lovey, stuffed lamb and monkey, and blanket. I put everything where she could reach it and left the room. I figured she would calm down, grab everything and go to sleep.
But it wasn't long before I started to feel bad. I hadn't given her an opportunity to apologize, I hadn't given her any nighttime snuggles, and I hadn't said her prayers with her. I went back in and picked her up. She kind of sniffled in my ear and said, "Sowwy, mama." I thanked her for her apology, sat with her in the glider, and we said her prayers. When the prayers were done, I gave her a kiss, gave her all of her stuff, laid her back down, and made the sign of the cross on her sweet little forehead. She peacefully went to sleep.
This morning was still a little bit rough. She did have a meltdown, but for the first time in weeks she calmed herself down. She played happily until Daddy was ready to take her to daycare. Her nanny reported a much happier kid. When she got home, we tried on her new tutu:
And she was just her old happy self for the rest of the night until bedtime.
You had better believe we said her prayers tonight.
You had better believe I am not going to let them slip again.
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On a related topic, what version of "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep" does everyone use with their kids? I have been using the one I grew up with:
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
But when I just googled it, looking for a graphic, I came across nine million graphics that went:
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
May angels watch me through the night,
And wake me with the morning light.
I don't think I want to switch from my childhood version. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to deal with the topic of death, and they'll be familiar with the concept from young childhood this way.
My sister switched to the new version with her daughters. I believe she did so after I was babysitting one night and putting the girls to bed. The younger one was just a baby, eight months or so, which means the older one was not quite four. She was saying her prayers and we got to that one, and she said the version from my childhood, segueing into:
O Angel of God, my guardian dear,
To whom God's love commits me here.
Ever this night, be at my side,
To light, to guard, to rule...
And then she looked me right in the eye and said:
And to DIIIIIE.
I almost died. It was creepy and hilarious. When my sister got home and I told her about it, she agreed it was creepy and hilarious, and then the next time I heard the girls saying their prayers they had switched versions.
True story.
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