As the black puffy pouches under Emily’s eyes will tell you, Abigail does not regularly sleep (or allow her parents to sleep!) very well between the hours of 11:00PM and 5:00AM.
We’ve tried a few strategies to encourage Abby to sleep at night. During the daylight hours, we make her do infant calisthenics, we regularly poke her with a sharp stick to keep her awake, and we coat her clothing with peanut butter to ensure that Hogan will constantly lick her if she tries to sneak some Z’s while we are distracted.
Unfortunately, none of these tactics has paid dividends, so we have had to take our game up a notch. We have begun “crib training” Abigail. Crib training is all about encouraging “wise choices” through classical conditioning.
As you can see from the picture of Abigail’s crib, we have a subdued, happy mobile on the “GOOD” side and a bizarre, angry mobile on the “EVIL” side. We begin the night by placing Abby with her head towards the sweet dream-enhancing critters of the “GOOD” mobile, but if Abigail refuses to sleep quietly, we turn her around to face the “EVIL” mobile. Remember… we are parents, not friends!
The “GOOD” mobile offers a pleasant parade of friendly critters who frolic counterclockwise to a lullaby softly plinked out by a wind-up powered music box. It’s a little slice of baby heaven!
The “EVIL” mobile features a large blue poison frog, a smiling (but stinging!) hornet, a miniature “monkey shines” haunted chimpanzee, a dangling poison sumac leaf, and a mechanized set of pincer leaves that close savagely like a half-starved Venus fly-trap at irregular, shocking intervals. This violent action is set to an instrumental soundtrack titled “Biting Insects of the Uncomfortably Humid Amazon.”
Eventually we may be able to remove the training aids, but when and if this happens is entirely up to Abby. We only hope we won’t be forced to use the evil clown mobile. The evil clown mobile offers excellent short-term silence, but its long-term psychological effects remain controversial.