role reversal

I've lost track of how many times Derrick and I have been awakened by Lissie in the middle of the night for the past month and a half. From conversations I've had with other parents, the whole sleeping-through-the-night thing is a come-and-go phenomenon.

Admittedly, it's not hard to get her back to sleep thanks to her Nuk sippies that act as nighttime binkies. But unfortunately we've trained her to not be able to fall asleep without one of these sippies in her mouth. And the sippies must be consistently stocked with water. So we started putting two (sometimes three!) full sippies in her bed with her at night. The idea was that if she ran out of water she could easily find another one to suck on; and, in fact it worked this summer really well when she and I were in Arizona. But no more.

Now she won't bother looking. She yells at us ("MOOOOOM. WAAATERRR!") until we get out of bed and hand her the other full sippy that was laying right next to her head. But this is just not sustainable. When it's my turn to get up it can sometimes be very hard for me to get back to sleep. I've contemplated teaching her to look around for it herself by standing in the doorway and telling her these very words, but that would still necesitate me getting out of bed and offically awake at 3 a.m. No good.

But then a brilliant, magical idea occurred to me today. Her baby monitor has been stashed in a drawer for months. What if I were to turn on the monitor on our side before we go to bed so that when she wakes up I can stay in bed and tell Lissie to find her own d*&% sippy? So easy, so brilliant. I think I might just try it tonight. Who knew that baby monitors could come in handy for a fussy, sleepy parent?