The bedtime routine has a new wrinkle. It just started last night. Elaina asks for "ma-ma", which oddly, sounds a little Italian the way she says it. It's cute and it's new, and she hadn't been feeling completely herself, so when she started asking for "ma-ma" last night, I brought her downstairs. (Oh, don't you cluck and roll your eyes or wag your finger at me—if it was your first experience with a 18-month old Korean girl calling out for her ma-ma in an Italian accent, you would have caved too!)
So anyway, no big deal: Elaina and I come downstairs, Heidi takes her back to bed after a drink of water, and all's well.
And then tonight.
Tonight I'm putting Elaina to bed, and she's restless and—yep—starts calling, "ma-ma". So, I'm lying there on the Yoga mat on the floor as usual, and "Daddy's here" isn't cutting it, nor is "Mmm-Duck needs you to go to sleep so he can get to sleep".
The "ma-ma" is heartbreaking. Who can lie there and ignore the pleas of his little girl as she calls plaintively for her mother? And just as my heart's about to break....
"Wuh wuh wuh wuh wuh".
Wait a second—she's calling for Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! Just as she's about to convince me that she's a sad little girl who needs her mother, and not just an increasingly resourceful little girl trying to stay up, she blows it by switching tactics from "ma-ma" to "Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!"—not her primary caregiver and the center of her emotional world—but her favorite cartoon.
I think she sensed that she'd blown it, or maybe Wubbzy was her last, best hope, and when that failed her, she had nothing left. In any case, soon after I assured her that we weren't getting up to watch Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, she went to sleep.
As I slipped quietly out of her room, I had to whisper, "Wow! Wow! Elaina!"
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A little blog about a new little girl.
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1 comment:
WOW!WOW!ELAINA is right! She sure played you! :) Glad you're recognizing "her potential" before she's a preteen/teenager! :) She's a smart "little cookie" and, by the sounds of it, she's going to know how to use it. Glad you introduced me to Wubzy.....I am so-o-oo out of the loop! Lin that I work with (a grandmother) was VERY familiar with Wubzy when I was telling her about it. He seems rather Pokemon-ish to me. :)
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