How to Pacify a Crying Baby (Toddler style)

I have not slept much the past two nights. My daughter has had high fever and has been very restless and irritable all night. Ask any parent and they will tell you how concerning it is when a child is sick. But today’s post is not about that. Today I want to write about Dawn’s little older brother who stayed up all night with me taking care of his little sister.

Even thought the two kids have their own respective rooms, we still prefer that they sleep with us at night. There are several advantages to co-sleeping which is why we do it. One disadvantage that we immediately realized after my daughter was born is that when you have more than one child, there is a domino effect when a child wakes up crying. Next thing you know, it’s two in the morning and you have two active kids that are wide awake and do not want to go back to sleep. Yes, that is truly a disadvantage on most days especially when you need to wake up at six in the morning to get ready for work. But last Sunday night, the same disadvantage turned out to be a blessing.

My 12-month old daughter woke up at one in the morning with a very high fever. Dawn, who is usually such a happy and easy baby, was screaming and crying non-stop. I tried every tested soothing trick but nothing seems to work. After about an hour of crying (not me but I think I was on the verge of doing so), my 4-year old son woke up and came over to ask me what is wrong with his sister. I told him his syobe (Chinese for younger sister) is not feeling well and has ‘ouchy’. Without much thought, Troy looked at his sister and started doing funny dances in front of her. He was singing and dancing and was just being silly. After only a few seconds, Dawn stopped crying and started laughing. I was amazed at how effective it was. I gave a big sigh of relief that the crying has stopped.

By four in the morning, the singing and dancing was not as effective anymore. Dawn started crying once again. All four of us had no sleep yet and I can only imagine how tired Dawn already was by then. Troy tried to do his silly dances one more time but told me ‘mommy, syobe’s still crying. She’s not laughing anymore’. So I thanked him and said ‘it’s okay. You’ve been such a good ahia (Chinese for big brother) already. You should go to sleep now’. I can see that Troy was already tired and also very sleepy by then. But my little trooper was not ready to give up. He looked around the room and saw Dawn’s current favorite toy. Her Baby Scout.

One of the many features of Baby Scout is that when you press his right foot, he would play lullabies for a set period of time (from 2 to 10 minutes). Troy played the songs and once again his plan worked. Dawn stopped crying. Troy held the doll up for Dawn to see as he went to sleep. Each time the songs ended, Dawn would start crying again and Troy, like on auto-feature, would sit up and press Baby Scout’s hand again to activate the music. This went on for an hour until Dawn finally fell asleep. By 6 in the morning, we finally had a quiet room.  My two kids (and husband) were sound asleep.

After 5 hours of no sleep, I felt physically drained and cannot wait to go to bed. But that Monday morning, before I closed my eyes, I thanked God for my son. I am prouder of him than I have ever been. He continues to amaze me at how mature he is becoming. I decided to document the events on my blog because I want my daughter to grow up knowing how much her ahia loves her even when she was still a baby.

To my two beautiful kids, mommy will never get tired of taking care of you. I love you more each day.

Thank you, Lord, for my family.