Fockerizing vs. Ferberizing

Walt mentioned to me tonight that he's worried that we're "Fockerizing" Devon. My friend Avinash just burned me a DVD of the movie "Meet the Fockers." If you haven't seen it, the quick synopsis is that a couple is getting married and their parents are meeting for the first time; the very uptight (ex-CIA operative) father of the bride, played by Robert De Niro, meets the hippy-dippy parents of the groom, played by Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand (who has a very funny turn as a senior citizen's sex therapist). A subplot in this movie has the bride's nephew being Ferberized (among other things) as part of a whole "tough love" campaign by De Niro, vs. what the groom's family, the Fockers, call "Fockerizing" -- essentially showering the child with attention, sneaking chocolate cake into his crib, etc. There are some hilarious scenes of the entire Focker family sneaking goodies and hugs to the nephew when he's supposed to be crying by himself (and thus learning how to "self-soothe") in his crib.

At any rate, Walt brought this up because Devon has taken her pre-bedtime filibustering to an entirely new level, and it's becoming clear that she's merely working us. When we start in on the "it's time to go to bed" song now (Rock a Bye Baby), she starts yelling, "No, no, no, no!" during the entire song and into the humming phase. Then -- in a new move -- she asks to get up on our bed (instead of being put into her crib immediately). This is clearly a move to prolong time between her and the crib. Then after we get off the bed and make a move to the crib, she is now crying for "rok, rok" -- the rocking chair -- where she wants me to rock her as she finishes off her bottle of milk. This is also a new thing and adds several minutes to the entire process. We're now trying to kick off the bedtime singing at least 15 minutes before we really want her to go to bed to account for all of this new process that we need to go through before actually getting into the crib. Walt's point, of course, is that we're allowing this to happen instead of being hardasses and sticking to the original schedule. We're having an internal debate about how to pare back down to the old bedtime routine. It's rather amazing, though, how creative Devon has become in setting up new roadblocks to getting into bed; and it's all very deliberate (although I suspect it's happening in the minute -- and if it works, she's just continues it -- because she has definitely not reached the level of strategizing that Henry has reached).

I was home from work today, although Devon stayed with Elaine for most of the morning. When I came to pick her up in the afternoon, all of the kids were in the backyard. Elaine had set up a sprinkler, everyone was naked, and they were all running through the water, playing in the mud and otherwise enjoying themselves. It took me 15 minutes to convince Devon to put her diaper on so I could get her into the car to leave -- clearly being naked at Elaine's in the water was WAY better than getting into the stuffy car and being crammed into the carseat. When we pulled away from the daycare Devon started crying, "Bak, bak Eeain! Bak Eeain!" (back Elaine -- since again, it was obviously a lot more fun at Elaine's than being in a hot car with mommy).

I had actually planned to take Devon to the pool later today after her nap. She is still obsessed with the pool; yesterday when she was with my mom, they went swimming at the Claremont, which has a really fabulous big outdoor pool (much better than anything we go to in SF, since all of the pools here are indoors and not at all geared towards families like the Claremont is). Devon was so excited about it that she wouldn't take her swimsuit off at all, so Walt brought her home in her swimsuit and socks. It was an interesting look, although not one that I'd recommend if you want to get service at anywhere but a halfway house. But it took her such a long time to get to sleep for her nap -- see above comments, exacerbated by the fact that she fell asleep in the car on the way back from Elaine's but I woke her up trying to get her diaper on, which she had taken off during the car ride -- that it took at good 30 minutes of crying and "No no no!" before she finally fell asleep. And then when she woke up and got her snack, it was already 5 pm, so I decided to postpone swimming until this weekend. At 5, by the time we would have gotten to the JCC, unloaded, got suits on and gotten in the pool it would have practically been time for dinner anyway.