Reasoning with a two year old

Last night for whatever reason Avery had a hard time getting to sleep. She was up crying at 9:30 a good two hours after her normal bedtime. So I went in to see what was wrong and rock her back to sleep. I tried to lay her down and give her a sippy but that freaked her out and she started crying, “I rock you” which translates to I want to rock. So off we went to the rocking chair. At this point she decided she was wide awake and wanted to read a book. Any parent knows that letting a child read a book when it is obviously their bed time isn’t a good habit to start. So I said no, which of course freaked her out again. Finally after about five minutes of wrangling her on the chair, because once the book option failed she decided she wanted to watch TV, I gave up and put her back in her crib to let her cry it out. Ten minutes later I was back in the room to “I rock you” again. After another ten minutes of getting no where I decided to try and reason with the small child. I told her that Mommy was so tired and would she please go to sleep so that Mommy could go to sleep. I talked about how I’d be sleeping in the next room and would be so happy if she would go to sleep. Believe it or not it worked! I was astounded. Has my kid gotten to an age where I can reason with her? Was this a one time fluke? I guess we’ll find out but I was pretty darn proud of myself and her for working out our bedtime problem in a civil fashion.

On another note the kid was up at 6 am this morning and I tried to ignore her. After like a half hour of her yelling at me she started saying, “Mommy owey, Mommy owey.” She has done this to me before, said that she was poopy when she wasn’t or said owey for no reason just to get me up. So I ignored her for another fifteen minutes. Then I decided that I wasn’t getting sleep anyways so what the heck I’d get up. Come to find out the small one had somehow gotten her knee stuck between her crib bars. When I went in to get her up she said, “Mommy lookit owey.” I felt about an inch tall. It would have been a great example of the boy who cried wolf if she would have understood what the hell I was talking about. But since she’s two and wouldn’t get this concept I felt like the crappy parent who ignored their poor child in a time of need. Does this mean I’ll jump up the next time she wakes up at six a.m., probably not! I’m guessing the chances of her getting her knee stuck in the crib again are slim to none. Plus going in when she claims she’s poopy or owey just shows her that saying these things gets action from Mommy and that’s not really something I want to instill in my child. Now I’m left to wonder if leaving my child in a crib for fifteen minutes with their knee stuck will have any lasting affects on her mental well being. This parent thing is tricky!