Bribery

Found a few more pictures on the camera. This is what you're likely to see if you Skype with us at this point: Edith is intrigued by this new technology but doesn't quite know what to do with it other than make silly faces.

Meanwhile,

NEWSFLASH: It has now been 72 hours during which Edith and I are both at home in Princeton that she has gone without drinking mommy milk. This is a first.

The chocolate milk scheme didn't work so well after the first day or so. Edith simply wasn't interested enough in chocolate milk for the appeal to last. So we were back to full-time nursing. We also were back to challenging bed times, in which she protested any of our attempts to leave the room until she fell asleep--and falling asleep was taking longer again.

Finally I tried to draw the line and insist that from now on, she would have to learn to be in her room by herself after it was time for adults to leave. The first night I tried this, I went into the main room and played the piano and sang after leaving her, thinking it might be comforting. Edith came to the door of her room and then out into the main room. I told her she had to stay in her own room, explaining that I used to like to listen to Mor-mor play the piano while I lay in bed in the dark.

"Now see, that's a difference between you and me," Edith said. "You liked to lie in bed and listen to Mor-mor play the piano. I like to come out to the door and dance while you play the piano."

The three nights of attempting to keep Edith in her room without an adult resulted in Tom reading in her doorway as a physical barricade to exit until 11pm or later, constantly being tested by a determined little escape artist.

At one point Tom said he thought weaning would be a help with all this. I'm not sure how he drew that conclusion, but we turned again to the weaning side of this multi-pronged offensive.

In talking to other mothers of three year olds and reading their blogs intensively over several days, I began to realize that we had hit a developmental stage we were failing to honor: the phase called A Sticker Chart Leads to Big Prize in an attempt to clear some Persistent Developmental Hurdle that is Bugging the Parents. It seemed like everyone I talked to or read about was doing it: for potty training, for night training, for good behavior at daycare, for whatever the nagging issue.

So I decided that maybe we ought to give it a try. My biggest concern was, and is, that there wouldn't be a prize that meant enough to Edith in these days of ready gratification that she could stick it out. She hasn't had any lasting passions other than to go to Disney World, which isn't on the radar in the near future.

So we trolled the aisles of Target together and came up with the idea: If she can go without nursing from now until her baby sister arrives, she will receive a Disney princess bicycle and helmet as her Big Sister Present (i.e. Weaning Present). After she and I agreed on this, she and Tom went back the next day to buy the bike (unassembled) and put the big box in the shed out back, where Edith knows it is nearby rather than being sold to some other kid and where she can go to look at it when temptation to nurse is particularly strong.

Meanwhile we made up a sticker chart, Edith choosing the paper colors and the stickers. We hung it in her room, and she seemed very pleased with it. She gets one sticker for refraining from nursing in the morning and another for refraining from nursing in the afternoon/night.

We'll see how this goes. Edith has never been wildly excited about trikes and bikes, so I hope that the interest lasts. I also hope it's still sufficiently warm for her to ride in November if she makes it.

As to refraining from nursing, I feel a bit as though I'm dealing with an addict in withdrawal. She jerks, she shakes, she cries, she babbles, she wails that she's hurting. She comes up with ridiculous turns of logic: "Mommy milk is good for my belly. Water is not healthy anymore. Someone told me." Or simply, with a trembling lip, "I'm not big enough to do this."

I'm not sure how much one physically restrains a recovering addict from the drug in question. I have no qualms about fending off her more dangerous physical advances, like hitting me or smacking my belly, but when she curls into my lap and paws at me and licks at my shirt, I'm not sure what to do other than to pick her up and put her down on the ground, only to repeat. And when she's really upset that's hard. I can't run away from her entirely.

But there have been a few glimmers of light already. After a tough morning of crying and wheedling, she finally was at the breakfast table dressed, coherent and in a good mood. Suddenly she told me, "I was pretending I wanted mommy milk this morning, but that was just a joke. I was teasing you." It definitely wasn't a joke at the time, but I'm okay with some revisionist history if it helps her.

Another morning she asked, "Did I have mommy milk today?" I thought it was a good sign that she couldn't remember.

As for bedtime, it seems to be getting worse rather than better, but I think there's really only one battle we can fight at a time. So we're living with the fact that even sans nap, and with 9pm lights-out, she tends to stay awake until 10:30 or 11pm--and we're there the whole time. I only have resources for combat on one front.

As a coda, I should say there have been other wonderful moments recently, also worthy of a newsflash.

Like last night: Edith devised her own project and conducted it for a full 30 minutes in the basement without any request for adult participation or intervention while I cooked dinner. For us, that was huge. She also agreed to take a break when I called her to dinner, ate dinner without complaint, returned to her project, then invited me to come see it when she was ready. All huge. It turned out that she had "decorated" the basement floor for a ball with small pieces from the rainbow skein of yarn I had given her and with small pieces of confetti cut from origami paper. I was flabbergasted that she'd had the patience.

She and I then put on our princess things and danced the night away on the beautiful floor.