If you’re following me on Twitter, you know the personal hell our family of three has been facing for the last two weeks:

It’s called a toddler that decided sleep is for the birds.

That was at 4am.  He finally conked out at 4:30am.

He has two nightlights.
It’s not night terrors (those have an entirely different cry).
He has loveys.
He’s not hungry or thirsty.
He really doesn’t need to drop his nap because he’s not napping 50% of the time anyway.

Basically?  He wants to eff with us.  Which might be a strong sentiment except I’ve only had one cup of coffee & four hours of sleep.

(also, the difference between a newborn being awake all hours &  a toddler being awake all hours is the amount of noise. when a newborn is awake, at least one parent can sleep.  when a toddler is awake, even folks in china hear him.)

It started innocently right around the time I lost my job & we feel for the little guy because it’s obvious he feels the stress in the house.  There have been a lot of changes in his wee world over the past few months & my heart goes out to him.  First Daddy was home a bit, then we were both at work, then Momma came home & he’s overjoyed but missing his Auntie & why isn’t anything the same anymore?!  But Momma needs her REM cycle back & more importantly, the kiddo does too.  After nights of rocking & rocking & rocking in the small hours of the day & Doug camping out on a pallet in his room, & purchasing a star turtle & giving him warm milk, we realized yesterday that it was time to pull out the big guns.  All three of us were at each other’s throats constantly from pure exhaustion.  I snapped at Harrison, something I very rarely do.  So Doug & I shook hands & decided that last night was the night.

We dusted off our Ferber book & got the stopwatch on my iPhone working.

We turned Harrison’s lock around so that we could lock him in, thereby taking back control of his ability to leave his room.  (shall I pause here & clarify that we still go to him, but it means homeboy can’t sneak out at 3am?  good.)

We took out his workbench & garbage trucks.

I turned off his light at the fan so that he can’t party all night long under a ceiling light.  (oh buddy, did that piss him off!)

& we hit the sack by 9pm.

I got a pretty awesome workout going back & forth to his room last night, calmly telling him to “Get back in bed, it’s night-night time.”  Tuck him in, give him a pat on the back, & close the door behind me.  I’m hoping that tonight it won’t take 2 1/2 hours for it to sink in that Momma ain’t fooling around.  Also, this is what we woke up to this morning:

I think it’s fair to say he was pretty ticked that Harrison Rave 2012 was thwarted.

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& in good news, the reason that Momma can’t hang at 4am anymore is because I got an offer from Microsoft as a contract for their marketing department.

SAY WHAT?!

It’s a contract so I’m still on the hunt for a full-time job with bennies.  The great news is that the contract is on my terms as far as how many hours I work per week & when the contract ends & they fully understand that I am still looking for a job.  So Harry is with his Auntie a few hours per week so I can log in some hours at home & take conference calls & keep interviewing with other companies.  What’s that you say, Charlie?  WINNING.