Why silence is no good

As I was laying down with Lana trying to get her to sleep (again, another story altogether), I was thinking about where toddlers get their energy from and how I wish I had Lana's stamina. Even when she brushes her teeth, she is walking in circles. When watching tv, she sits down, stands up, dances, sits back down, jumps up on the sofa, etc. Me watching her watch tv makes me tired. Anyway, when she goes to sleep at night, there I lay next to her, playing dead, well not dead--alseep and she is rolling all over the place. Rolling, sitting up, crashing down (sometimes right on my head--youchie), talking to me, asking me to sing songs, etc. I say "its time to be quiet and go to sleep" like 100 times. And then...silence..... I am thinking--YAY, she is asleep. So I open my eyes and she is fully awake with her finger jammed up her nose. She then wipes the booger on my face and says "boogie". Fantastic. There are many other instances where I have learned that silence is not a good sign. For instance, the other day I bought a new sippy cup made of the "safe plastic" (I am sick and tired of cleaning those damn straw cups, so I was hoping she could drink from a regular sippy) and I gave her some water in it. She seemed to like it just fine. So Lana is in the family room watching Sesame Street and I am reading the mail at the dining table. For like 3 minutes I hear nothing...silence.... I say, "Lana, what are you doing?" She comes to the dining room with her empty cup and says "Raining!" Yep, she observed that the "safe" sippy cup was indeed not leak proof, so she made it rain all over the coffee table, carpet, sofa, etc. Thank goodness it was just water. She did help me clean it up though. I have also experienced the sound of a big bang, then silence.....then the loudest cry you ever thought possible. The last time I heard this type of silence, there was blood and a lot of it. No worries, she was fine--just banged her lip on the crib rail slicing it open. Maybe crib injury was the beginning of her decision that cribs are for babies--namely her baby brother she calls didi. I am not pregnant. We have no other children. Its her imaginary brother. I think Bill has been brainwashing her.

The sleep issues we are having with Lana are driving me insane and making me feel like I am doing something wrong, kind of like I failed a midterm. One day she just decided she was done with the crib. We put the mattress on the floor, which she seemed to dig, except that she wanted me to stay and sing to her. Okay, its a new thing, I will stay and sing. Fast forward 4 weeks and I am still in her darn bed singing and pretending to be asleep. After she is alseep I generally sneak out (unless I pass out myself, which sometimes happens too) and then sometime around 1am she screams MOMMY and I crawl into bed with her where I remain for the rest of the night. I have tried to just tuck her in and leave, but she totally freaks out--I am talking dramatic hysterics. She will sometimes tolerate me sitting by the bed instead of being in it, but after about 30 min of that crap I have lost feeling in both legs. The ironic thing is that literally 2 days before she decided cribs were for babies, I was telling my friend about how we sleep trained her when she was an infant and its one thing I am really proud of b/c I feel like I taught her something useful--to go to sleep by herself. That was a major jinx. I suppose I just don't know how to proceed. I feel bad locking her in her room and letting her scream and cry. Although we did CIO when she was little, I feel she is more aware now and she gets scared sometimes. When I come into her bed, she grabs my hand and puts it next to her face. She wants to cuddle. I love the affection b/c she has never been a cuddly baby. AHHH, I just don't know what to do. For now, I am hoping she outgrows her need to have someone in her bed, but I have a sinking feeling I should just resign myself to co-sleeping and get over myself. I do need to teach her that wiping boogers on people is not socially acceptable.