What Time is It?

One of the fun things about little kids is how they get attached to certain things that don't really make a lot of sense. My wife was reading BabySBG the book "Goodnight Moon" and in the book there a couple of clocks. My wife pointed them out to her and she has become somewhat obsessed with clocks. So much so that the word Clock was one of the first 10 words that she said and is probably, after Hi, Mommy, and Daddy, the word she has said most often. Her vocabulary has really exploded over the last month or so, but her fascination with clocks has not diminished whatsoever.

We were down at the in-laws over Thanksgiving for four days and they have a number of clocks, including a grandfather clock in their living room, which chimes every 15 minutes. Like clockwork, so to speak, every time the thing chimed, BabySBG chimed in, "Clock! Clock!" After four days, it became one of those things that was kind of cute, but a lot cuter four days ago, if you get my drift.

Well, anyway, Lucy had a little clock for her and I hung it up in her room. Early Tuesday morning, BabySBG woke up and was crying. I'm in charge of getting up in the middle of the night if she needs anything (and believe me, it's a lot easier for me to attend to her than have my wife do it -- she'll go right to sleep for me, but wants to play with my wife). I usually let her cry for a while, because she will, 9 times out of 10, just go to sleep on her own. That's the most desirable result, of course. But, she persisted in her crying and I decided that she needed her sleep and that kind of overruled my normal inclination to let her cry it out. Normally when I go into her room in the middle of the night, I'll pick her up and she's asleep in 30 seconds. Not this time. I picked her up and she immediately started screaming bloody murder. She has a cry and then there's this high pitched scream. It was high pitched scream time. I have various techniques to try to calm her down, but this time I tried something new. I said, "where's your clock?"

Immediately, she stopped screaming, pointed in the dark toward her time piece and said, "Clock!" She then snuggled up to her Dad. I rocked her for about 15 seconds and told her that I was going to put her in the crib again. She voiced her approval of that idea. I got up, put her in the crib, and walked out of the room. She went from screaming at the top of her lungs to calmly laying in her crib in under a minute. Behold the power of the clock.

Once again this morning, she was awake and crying. My wife suggested that I get up and attend to her. I waited for a while and then determined again that maybe it was best for all of us if I head in there. So, I opened the door and there was my 19 month old daughter, sitting in her crib crying. As I approached her, I saw her little arm rise in the darkness and point to the wall. "Clock!" It's as if she had the overwhelming urge to tell her Dad that she had a clock on the wall. No crying. No discontent. Clock. I didn't even have to pick her up.

I did pick her up and rock her for a few seconds. I asked her if she just wanted to say hi to Dad. She said "Yeah", although I doubt she really understood what I was saying. I asked her if she was ready to go back into the crib. No response. She was already sleeping. I put her back in her crib and went back to bed.

BabySBG doesn't suck her thumb, have a special blanket, and has never taken a pacifier. That's something that I've really liked, she seems secure without those objects. But, I've noticed lately that she's started to have attachment to things -- her dolls, rubber ducks (including a specific one -- how she remembered that one is beyond me). And now, she has a clock that doubles as a security blanket of sorts. I don't pretend to understand it, but hey, whatever gets you through the night.