Roo: Subject To Interpretation

[woodwardiocom]

Roo only has a handful of words thus far, and anything like a complete sentence is rare and dubious. She's got a lot of incomprehensible babble going for her, though.

One time this is fraught is the middle of the night. It used to be that, if she woke up crying, I would go in to the nursery, and she'd continue crying until I picked her up to soothe her back to sleep.

Nowadays, she clearly knows that these "word" things are used to communicate in some manner, so when I enter the nursery, she'll stop crying and say something like "Da ba da!" or "Ma guh-ga!" My brain then automatically parses this into "I had a bad dream!" or "I thought I heard a monster!" Or, more heartwrenchingly, "I woke up and you were gone!" or "You left me all alone!"

I'm so, so doomed.

Comments

[ebk30303.livejournal.com]

Sorry, favorite sone-in-law, hopefully she'll start sleeping through the night so you won't be doomed for long.

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

Since Hotspur began talking, the things she says when I come in include wails for "icy cold cold water" (both colds are evidently necessary), and the bluntly stated "I want Andy." There's also "I want cuddle", "Will you sit?", "I not sleepy" (contrast with "I'm asleep!", which she said while standing on her bed brandishing a lightsaber), and the ever popular "I go downstairs now" (half an hour after bedtime). She hasn't complained about bad dreams, monsters, or abandonment, and if those thing occurred to her at all, I'm pretty sure she'd complain about them.

On the basis of this evidence, I'm going to suggest that you open your mind and think beyond the self-inflicted guilt trips.

Or you could give it all up and start reading Honest Toddler.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

When V wakes and it's not food or diaper, I'm convinced it's monster dreams or growing pains. Poor little girls!