Mom sick.

So my kid’s sleep schedule does not want to adjust to school nights.  I made the mistake of letting her stay up until 11 p.m. during the summer, and now I’m paying for it.  Her bedtime is supposed to be 8:30.  I figure if I get her there by 9:00 it’s good.  Well, I can lead the kid to bed but I can’t make her go to SLEEP! 

“But mom, I’m not tired.”  Well, what am I supposed to say to that?  If she’s not tired, she’s not tired!  You can’t force her to fall asleep!  Believe me, I would if I could.  So we do this back and forth thing for a couple hours, her getting out of bed and me telling her to go back to bed, she’s got to get up early and I don’t want her to be grouchy in the morning, her saying she’s not tired, she can’t fall asleep, she can’t help it.  But then she’s not even TRYING to sleep.  She’s reading a book or playing a game or petting the cat.  Until finally I’ve lost all patience, and frankly I don’t have much to begin with. 

But I’m trying to handle things well because I don’t want the last thing my kid remembers as she falls asleep is that her momma yelled at her.  That’s not a good way to fall asleep for either one of us.  So last night I got silly.  Usually that’s her daddy’s job but I figured I’d give it a try before I resorted to pulling my hair out and duct taping her to the bed.  I sat on her bed and took her in my arms (she’s 8; not an easy feat people) and then was rocking her like a baby with very big exaggerated movements and singing Rock a Bye Baby all silly and acting all stupid and the more she laughed the harder and more exaggerated I rocked her until we were both about to fall off the bed when suddenly she says,

“Oh, please stop that now.  I’m getting Mom Sick.”

The kid seriously makes me happy.