Ty woke up around 1:30 AM. I swear, if he wakes up much earlier, he'll have succeeded in traveling backwards through time. He must be stopped before he disrupts the space time continuum...and before we go stark raving crazy.
The previous night, Juan gave the time traveler some juice and that seemed to work, so juice it was again. We didn't bother trying milk. Ty had been having trouble all week keeping it down, and we didn't expect things to be any different this time.
With the bottle finished, we put him between us and hoped that sleep would return for all. Instead, we got the usual bad manners - kicking, flopping around, whimpering, crying and smacking in the face.
And then the battle began.
I put Ty back in the crib. He had other ideas and immediately made his way to the end of the crib, stood up, and started wailing in our direction. I got out of the bed and laid him back down. He again made his way to the end of the crib, wailing all the way.
I got up and put him down. He got up and wailed. We did this over and over and over again.
I could tell I was wearing The Beast out though. Each time I put him down, he lingered just a little bit longer before getting up again. Success was near!
Juan congratulated me on my perseverance and we agreed...Super Nanny would be proud. There was no way we were going to have one of those noisy, whiny, no-boundary-respecting brats on our hands.
Ty's a smart little guy though. Suddenly, after weeks of us longing for something more articulate than "gukum blik grlikm", Ty found his voice. "Daaadaaaaaaaa!", he cried with his arms stretched towards Juan.
We weren't falling for that though. I persisted. Ty persisted. Juan stayed put in the bed.
"Daaaaadaaaaa!" "Daaadeeeeee!!"
My determination flagged and Juan took over. The end was near though. Ty seemed to be wearing down.
Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up.
After about 40 minutes of this, we figured we'd try a second bottle. We didn't expect that to work . He had finished his last bottle before our epic battle began and we felt like we were pushing our luck by giving him any more fluids. The whole vomiting-after-drinking thing had grown old fast. While Juan was downstairs getting a bottle ready, the battle waged on upstairs, though only half heartedly. At one point, when Ty went down, I heard this weird crinkle, like he was pulling on his diaper. I switched on the bedroom light and saw that Ty was clutching a bag of crackers. How those got in there I'm not sure. Juan thinks they fell in from a ledge above the crib. What the hell...I popped open the bag and gave him one. Ty practically enhaled it, so I gave him another. And another. And another. Juan arrived with the bottle and Ty sucked that down too. And no vomiting.
The little booger was hungry!
Our plans to post a "Daddies Win the Battle" post were quickly scrapped. We wondered if we should even admit that we might have succeeded in scarring the boy for life. Honesty is best though. There could be some dad reading this right now who might find himself in the midst of a battle in the coming evenings.
Our advice...try food. It seems to work.
