"The witching hour is a the time of day when supernatural creatures such as witches, demons and ghosts are thought to appear and be at their most powerful..."
I briefly touched on this in Sadie's 9 month post, but during the past month Sadie has decided to have meltdowns almost every single work night. Between 5:45 and 6:00pm it's just a mad dash to unpack the daycare bottles, spot treat any dirty clothes that came home, fill the humidifier up, get her dinner heating up in the microwave, go outside and holler at the dogs to stay on our property and not the neighbors, all without having Sadie LOSE HER SHIT! (yes, that did require caps and boldness) before we start dinner/bedtime routine. And if I'm honest with you guys it's actually been longer than a month. When it first started happening a few months ago I took it as Sadie being over tired and moved starting her dinner/bedtime routine up by 15 minutes and thing were great! So why don't I just move her dinner/bedtime routine up by 15 minutes again? Well, that's because I already start her bedtime routine at 6:00pm and remember, we get home at 5:45pm. There are a few things I just have to do as soon as I get home before I can start with dinner/bedtime, so moving that up by 15 minutes is out of the question.
Sadie will generally fall asleep on the car ride home and if I am lucky I can get her in the house still a sleep and let her nap for 5 more minutes. Maybe this is my downfall, maybe I should wake her up as soon as we get home. But, man, having her asleep for 5 minutes when I get home is awesome. It gives me time to do all those things I mentioned above without having Sadie flip-a-lid. If Sadie is awake when we get home, or wakes up while I am getting her in the house, I'll take her into the kitchen with me and sit her on the floor with some toys, sing and talk to her, swoop in for kisses and playing all while trying to do the above list of items. Inevitability I have to leave her line of vision for something, to grab the humidifier, to go check see what the dogs that are barking their heads off at (generally the llamas next door and not an ax murder, still gotta check though!), in those 5 seconds I am out of her site Sadie will start with the whine crying. I can usually get back to her fast enough before she completely loses it. I get it, she is with other people all day long, so when it's just the two of us and I leave her (for 5 seconds) it's scary for her. Oh, but don't worry, she can leave me for 5 minutes and it's nooo big deal, because she did the leaving!
I can normally hold off these mini-meltdowns until one of two times: she finishes all of her dinner or the pajamas go on. She eats sooo fast and if you don't have a spoonful of food ready and waiting to go in her mouth when she is done swallowing it's like you want her to starve. Oh and then when the food is all gone you can clap and say "yaaaay Sadie!" till the cows come home, she's still pissed it's all gone (...we have discussed upping her dinner). Then it's time to put the pajamas on...and it's like the pajamas are made of hot searing fire and I'm going to scream my face off until you put a bottle in my mouth.
I really don't think she is flipping out because she's hungry. Generally she has her last bottle at daycare between 4:30 and 5:00pm and then 5 ounces of food at 6:00pm (how she fits another bottle in her belly at 6:20 is amazing to me!), but like I said we are considering upping her dinner amount.
I've tried changing things up and instead of immediately going into the kitchen with her, we'll have some cuddle time on the couch and play on the floor a little and then move to the kitchen. This method works great for the separation thing, I can leave her and she will generally be totally fine. But by that point we are about 10 minutes behind where we should be and we still end up with a sad Sadie by bedtime.
I'm 90% sure that all of this is related to being tired. Monday's are generally great! I love Monday's! I have my happy, happy Sadie for 45 minutes and it's awesome. But by Friday? Not so much. What changes between Monday's and Friday's? Her naps. Remember back when I talked about how Sadie would not nap at daycare? Well, when she moved up to the next class and started crawling her naps got better. Monday's she generally has a 2-2.5 hour nap, by Friday I'm lucky if she naps for 45 minutes.
Maybe I need to let her take a nap when we get home. Perhaps that would solve it all. Lay her down as soon as we get home and let her nap for an hour and a half and then wake her up for an hour or so, feed her dinner, give her a bath and then put her down for the night. But I worry she will be every bit as grouchy, if not more so, because I work her up. I get so worried messing with her like that though. She is an awesome sleeper, she sleeps for 12 hours straight every night and on the weekends it's close to 14 hours!
Y'all, it sucks. I love working and I love Sadie, but it totally blows when the small fraction of time I get with Sadie during the week is spent trying to get her to not cry. I'll sit down after she is in bed and feel wiped out. Not to mention when 85% of the time it's me doing bedtime by myself and the 15% of the time when Robert is home she is happy as a clam, it's hard to not take it personally and go to that place where I am mad at Robert for not being home in time for bedtime because if he was home every night she would be happy every night, or the even darker place of thinking she looooves him and screams at me.
So, if anyone is still reading this, got any words of wisdom, suggestions, brand of wine to buy while
Yuck. It sounds like you barely get any time with her during the week with all that sleeping. :( You certainly don't want her screaming during it. I like the idea of a nap when you get home and then keeping her up a little later, but I get that it is scary. Maybe try it for a week and see if it works??
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