We Are Not (Always) the Boss of Her

Phoebe really is making big strides lately, and asserting herself more and more. When she doesn't want to do something (like go to bed) she stalls like a ten-year old Chevy. At bedtime, two techniques in particular have proved very effective: books and water. Phoebe picked right up on the fact that I don't enforce limits on how many stories we'll read (I'm generally The Enforcer around here, but really, I'm going to discourage her from spending time with books? I don't think so). And we've now taken to keeping a sippy cup upstairs because Phoebe insists on a sip of water before bed. This started out as a one-night stall tactic, but it's now just part of the routine. We only put a tiny amount of water in the cup, so that Phoebe doesn't over-pee the capacity of her diaper and wreck the sheets (we learned the hard way), but she'll drag out that tiny sip as long as we let her. Even with all the stalling, she still gets a solid 11 hours a night of sleep, so no harm done.