failed parenting experiment

We learned a good lesson last night.  Unfortunately, we learned it the hard way.  We had gone to visit some friends yesterday and Oscar was going to have to try to take his afternoon nap on the go.  So, we brought his cherished lamb with us.  You know, so there would at least be a modicum of hope that he might snooze.  We had a lovely visit with our friends and even talked at length about how dependent he is on his little lamb to sleep.  Which was probably our curse.  Because we promptly left that gathering to go to Gong-Gong's birthday gathering and left the little lamb at our friend's house.  We didn't realize that we had left the little lovey behind until we were already on our way to meet friends at the park in an attempt to wear all the kids out before bed.  Then, I had an interview with a board of directors at 9pm and since the friend works with David less than a mile from our house, we figured, how bad can it really be?

You know where this is going.  It was that bad.

Since Oscar didn't have his BFF to go to sleep, I spent a little more time snuggling with him and working really hard to get him to sleep.  Since he hadn't napped, I had fatigue on my side.  But, since I never do that, he sort of thought we were supposed to be playing instead of preparing for slumberland.  But, he did drift off to sleep and we moved on, kind of thinking that this parenting is really no big deal.  We got it.  Mm, hmm.  The other kids went to bed, we did various other household tasks, I had my call, I debriefed D about the call and then the whimpering began.  Oh, no.  Poor Oscar!  He woke up.  And couldn't find his buddy, his pal, the eternally-present-for-sleeping lamb.  This guy.

Yeah, it's sort of my fault.  I made him dependent on a stuffed animal so that he wouldn't be dependent on me.  Which works.  Until you don't have the stuffed animal anymore.  Time to soothe again.  D prepared some milk.  You know, a full tummy can convince anyone it's time to sleep, right?  And, off to sleep he went.  For a couple hours. 

The next time he woke up, he had had about 6 hours of sleep.  So, he wasn't completely exhausted, but still tired.  And no amount of coaxing, shushing, soothing, rocking, bouncing, (flashback to babies--AACK!) could convince him it was time to rest, much less sleep.  And I was tired.  So, maybe I didn't try as hard as I ought.  I tried tossing every manner of stuffed animal we own in his crib.  We have three kids.  That's a lot of stuffed animals.  He rejected each one soundly.  I even attempted to let him sleep in our bed (translate, I was so tired, I just needed to lie down and he could lie on top of me or crawl around, whatever, because resting while he's not sleeping is better than actively trying to convince him to do the same).  D tried to help out and took him downstairs to play for awhile until he was SO tired, he had no choice but to fall asleep.  At which point, we had already lost most of our night.

The worst part of the entire experience was watching him on the amazing, infrared video monitor, which we generally love.  He sleepily and desperately picked up each of the attempted replacement toys and with much confusion and crying put them back down since they were not the beloved lamb.  He just couldn't understand why he couldn't find his sleep aid.  His drug. 

Of course, for SylRafa, we got backup loveys.  But this guy decided to fall in love with a wonderful little lamb that we got as a gift. And, of course, THEY DON'T MAKE IT ANYMORE. A few months ago, I did search for one, which included FaceBook crowdsourcing to see if my friends could help me identify its maker, which they did.  It's now a collector's item.  At the time I thought the price they were asking was ridiculous, but now I'm thinking that compared to 3+ hours of lost sleep, it would have been worth it.  I'm sure it has now quadrupled in price, if I could even find one.  We might need to tether it to his ankle...