SOB, WAIL, QUACK?

The little man has me wrapped around his finger.  He's teething right now, and he's using it against me.  (He cut three of the four molars in the past two weeks and number 4 is about to bust through the surface any day now.  So in his defense, he probably is in some pain.) 

It all started about two weeks ago.  He'd been biting friends at school (another post for another time), and I could feel the teeth under the gums, so I knew we were in for some new teeth.  He started waking up in the middle of the night crying and instead of letting him crying himself back to sleep I told myself "Oh, he must have woken up because his teeth hurt. You simply cannot let him just cry in his crib. He needs his momma. He needs some TLC." And then, having convinced myself that he needs me, I go in his room and what do you know? He stops crying. (I told you he needed his momma. I'm deluded, yes.)

Things only got worse last week on vacation.  We went to Florida with another couple and their 17 month old daughter to ring in the new year.  I was afraid Lukas would wake up the other baby with his sobs in the middle of the night, so I'd immediately pick him up when he started to cry at night.  He would eventually calm down after some cuddles, Advil and milk were administered.  Oh, yea, and after he was allowed to fall asleep in the bed with us.  Do you see the trend of bad habits I let form?  This may or may not have happened four nights in a row.  I won't admit to anything.

Well, the realization that he's just messing with me to get some cuddles and sleep in the big bed came to light this week.  And it's my mom's friend Jaye's fault, really.  You see, Jaye gave Lukas this soft, plush talking/quacking duck last Easter and it's been sitting on Lukas' bookshelf since then.  Occasionally we'll get it down and play with it, but for a long time Lukas was terrified of the duck.  But some time in the last few weeks he learned how to say DUCK and to quack and now he says duck all the time.  And he now apparently loves the Jaye duck.

The reason I know he loves the duck?  Because I am a fool.  Tuesday night I woke up around 1:45am to Lukas' crying, screaming and jumping up and down in his crib.  Having gone through the above-mentioned convincing myself that his teeth hurt, I went in his room to soothe my poor baby.  I opened the door to his room and what was he doing?  Pointing at the duck and saying "duck duck duck" over and over again.  He kept crying and yelling "duck" until we went over to the duck and I picked the duck up for him to hold.  And then all was right in his world.  He just wanted to hold the duck.  At 1:45 in the morning.  Right.

This wouldn't be that bad, and you could call it a fluke, except that it happened again last night.  Or I should say, I let it happen again.  I was being tough at first and was going to wait him out.  I let him cry a full 15 minutes.  He would cry and then lay down for a second,  get back up and cry some more.  I figured that after 15 minutes of his cries (which increased in volume as the time wore on) he must really need something, so I went in there.  He stopped crying and just smiled at me.  And then, as if to say "gotcha" he just started yelling "DUCK, DUCK, DUCK" with this huge grin on his face. 

And I did the only thing you can do at 2am when your 14 month old is quacking like a duck.  I laughed and gave him a hug.

My new plan is to put the duck in his crib with him tonight, so that way he can just cuddle with the damn duck without waking momma up.