Alice in Wontsleeperland

I’m in the midst of a fight. A painful, seemingly endless, battle. A sometimes infuriating war. A parent-child conflict of epic proportions.

It takes places in a grey and mint green room. It’s dimly lit, with a fan on the ceiling. There’s a single bed in the corner, and a cabinet on an opposite wall under some windows. Extending from the other corner is a wooden crib. There are various pieces of artwork on the walls.

We’re in Alice’s room; the scene of what can only be described as a battleground. Because, here, in a place I painstaking painted, she simply refuses to go to sleep.

If I had a Rand for every time I’ve said “being a parent is hard”…I’d be Scrooge McDuck-ing it up in these here parts.

It wasn’t always this way. She used to sleep like a dream. Between 5:45pm and 6:15pm she would go down with little fuss. But since about mid-December, everything’s changed. She kicks, she cries, she punches herself in the head and scratches at her eyes. She rolls around in her crib and crashes into the sides with force. I’m not exaggeration. I watch nightly as she does this.

In sleepier times. After she’s fought, she really is the cutest little sleeper ever.

Now, I’m a patient man. Generally [more on that another time]. But it’s hard to stay calm and relaxed — which is the advice I get, because, you know, they will just feed off your frustrations and be even less inclined to sleep (as if that were possible…) — when your child is going full Anthony Joshua on herself. It’s like she’s a boxer, and she’s facing off against her own face.

I thought it, maybe, had something to do with her being off from school because the fights started at about the time the creche closed for the Christmas break. But she’s gone back to school now, and while I’ve missed spending the days with her, I really thought she would go back to sleeping better. I thought school would tire her out, get her back into routine. But it simply hasn’t happened.

A good night is a half-hour fight. A bad night is two hours, sometimes more. Megan and I take turns to slowly wear her down, and we eventually win. But we’re exhausted afterwards, and skulk to the couch, eat supper and watch TV. It’s draining.

Guys, having a one-year-old is tough.