Time Wasted

Today it has taken nearly 5 hours (and counting) to get Siiri to fall asleep. Two and a half hours before her nap and nearly the same time before her night sleep. It is so annoying. Like truly annoying to the point that I'm ready to lock her in her room and just ignore her when she's supposed to sleep and then unlock the door when she's supposed to be awake. We can't do that but I'm allowed to dream, aren't I? 

Siiri's nap kept happening later and later until it was usual for her to still be awake at 3 p.m. That's the time when most kids her age have already woken up from their nap. It didn't make sense to even start putting her to sleep before 1:30 p.m. and the one and a half hours waste was all in the daily plan. Then sometimes she kept resisting sleep until 4 or even 4:30, so for a while we didn't even try anything until 2 p.m. Then she fell asleep even later and woke up a couple of hours before her evening bed time. That didn't work either so we put her to sleep earlier again. It seemed that no matter what we do, it takes 1.5-2.5 hours for her to fall asleep. Now we're trying something different - for a couple of days now, we have set her sleeping times to the recommended 12 a.m. and 7 p.m.. That's 3-4 hours earlier than she's used to.

The bed-time routine is great and I really don't see why it doesn't work. I start by getting into pajamas. Then I wash her teeth. Then she gets to select two stories or fairy tales from her books. If she selects really short stories, I usually read a third short story. That takes about 20-30 minutes. Every other day Erkki does that, but it's deliberately identical. Sometimes she wants to play with a snow globe while I'm reading, but usually she tends to wander around the room and comment what I'm reading. Sometimes I get her to stay put and lie in bed, but that doesn't make any difference so I don't enforce it much. When stories have been read, she lies down, I tuck her in and we wave good-night. The routine is the same for both nap and night time sleep. And then 3 minutes later Siiri is jumping on her bed. I order her to lie down. 2 minutes later she wanders away from her room, I order her back in her room.   Then she spends 10 minutes talking and playing with her stuffed toys.  I treat this as "at least she's in bed", but then she gets bored with that and walks out again. And that goes on for a couple of hours until I get irritated and short-tempered and whenever she even makes a beep, I don't even bother going to her, but I just yell from another room, "Siiri, back to bed, right now!". And then eventually she is so sleepy that she just crashes in her bed, because that's where she happens to be.

So why is it so bad if she spends such a long time falling asleep. I could just, you know, get used to it and not have a problem with it. Well, it's not that simple.  When it's sleeping time, we don't play or eat. I don't teach her anything, she doesn't practice drawing or play with Play-Doh. It's pointless wasted time. It's my life (or Erkki's) and Siiri's just ticking away completely uselessly. I don't get to concentrate on anything because every 5-10 minutes I get to order Siiri back to bed. (I guess now you see the potential usefulness of getting a lock for her door, except there's no bathroom there.). When I'm in the other room putting Liisa to sleep, Siiri takes advantage of the situation and wanders around and then starts playing with the volume of her voice: shrieking softer and louder. When I was cutting Liisa's hair while Liisa was asleep, Siiri came out and casually woke up Liisa with pointless talk. That was one time I was really pissed off and didn't want to talk with Siiri for a couple of hours. I totally see the enjoyment I would get from physical punishment. I really have a cruel streak in me.   Some parts of my childhood have taught me to be cruel because to me it seemed that everyone else is cruel too. That's not completely true but I do still have to work on my temper. Physical punishment would be a bitter sweet revenge for not going to sleep at the right time: but that sounds way too mean for any good parent, so I won't do that.

I don't have any plan. Currently it seems that Siiri falls asleep when I am already cranky and on the verge of losing my temper, so perhaps I should start this way.  Brillint idea, eh? So when I read her the fairy tales and say good night, I can add, "and don't you dare getting out of bed, or I will hide all your toys and you won't see them until you wake up. And if you get out of bed again, I start throwing them out the window. One. By. One." Or I could take a devil's mask that I could buy in some carnival store and put it on and not take it off until after she falls asleep, so that she could be too scared to come out of her room, and while I wear it I could be really mean and angry. Or I could do it easier and "accidentally" start watching horror movies after her bedtime, so that when she wanders out of her room, she happens to see them and won't ever dare to come out of her room at bedtime ever again. (Except when she starts having nightmares and runs out of her room screaming...  ) I don't know. All of it sounds like a good idea at the moment. Anything sounds better than 5 and a half hours (yes, that's how long it finally took) wasted during an otherwise perfect Sunday. Half of that time Erkki was the active party, the other half I was the active party, not none of that time we could spend together, just watching something together or having a meaningful conversation. Today Liisa was in a foul mood as well, so even browsing the net was not easy. I didn't find any useful information how to improve nap times. It seems like we've already tried everything.

Any ideas?

PS! Liisa is doing really well. She learned to turn to her stomach before she was 4 months old and now she turns on her stomach whenever possible. She does't interfere with Siiri's daily schedule much and sometimes she's even helpful in getting Siiri to fall asleep. Siiri is still much more likely to wake up Liisa than the other way around (ratio about 4:1).