We had two recent long weekends at the end of last year, one was Christmas weekend and one was New Year Day weekend. And I didn't look forward to both at all. The reason? Xavier Lee.
Xavier has been very needy, clingy, whinny, a crybaby, all at once, recently. We do not know what causing it or why is he like that, but its been driving Lilian and myself nuts! And the two long weekends became Hell Weekends for us.
We dun get enough sleep as he wakes up like 2-3 times every night, most of the time refusing to go back to sleep. And he would struggle and worm around whenever Lilian and myself tried to carry him to sleep. Most of the time Lilian had to latch him so both of us get some eyes shut.
And now that he is very mobile crawling around, he no longer want to stay in the playmat, preferring to crawl out to the cold hard ceramic floor. And he would stand, pull, poke, throw everything you tell him not to.
And his whining just doesn't stop. We tried ignoring him once at night once he literally whined and cry for 2 hours non-stop. You can say he is very determine, I prefer to call it stubborn. Wonder if it has to do with being born in the year of Ox.
And then it finally happened. 30 minutes ago, Lilian and I just snapped when we had enough of his whining and crying. Xavier in his high chair and I pulled his chair to face the the toilet which did not have the lights on. I told him to stop crying and Daddy will come. If you continue to cry, you will stay there.
He cried non-stop for 5 minutes. Then when he stopped to take a breather, I went over to pull him back and said "See, you stop crying, that is why Daddy got you back. You should not be crying for no reason." He then started to whine and cry again and I put him back in the corner. Each time he quieten down I slowly step forward but when he starts crying again I walked back to where I was and said to him stop crying.
After 5 minutes when he was taking his breather, I wanted to pull him back again but Lilian shouted in the kitchen to leave him there to cry all he wants. Frustrated with his crying and without thinking, I went into my room and ignore him. He cried for the next 10 minutes to the point he was forcing his cries louder and coughing very hard. Lilian then quickly asked me to pick him up from the high chair. And by that time, I have become the person he hated most. He didn't even want me to touch him initially.
So what's the morale of the story? There can only be one disciplinarian at work at any one time. And its gonna be even harder to teach Xavier not to cry now, as he knows he just have to cry till he cough and choke and we will give in to him. Remember, babies will test your limits everyday and they have all the time in the world to "play" with you. Don't play play...
