Tickled Baby Syndrome

So our experiment in baby sleep time manipulation is going.

Actually, it seems to be showing some promising signs of progress. We started Monday, and, though it was a thankless and soul bruising experience (for me--Libby has passed on this once in a lifetime opportunity since the beginning, preferring to make me the bad guy again. This is not unusual. I am the go-to bad guy in our family. Probably the reason Gabe "roared" for the thing that I "say" in the video from the other day. But I think I'm OK with that. I won't be the favorite, but I'm betting I'll be the one most likely to be left alone when some nightmare or stomach ache strikes in the middle of the night. Seems a fair trade for having to dish out the discipline), she actually slept through the night except for a couple of feedings.

So we repeated Tuesday with similar results. Wednesday we had a bit of a set back due to scheduling. Button spent a good portion of the day riding in the car, where she sleeps. But she still managed to make it most of the way through the night. And today I was able to mostly keep her awake, so I'm hopeful we'll have similarly pleasant results.

But I'm a little worried. I'm worried that I'm turning my baby into a monster (and I've given it a name that I'm just a tad bit ashamed of, what with it playing off the actual, terrible problem known as "shaken baby syndrome." Not ashamed enough to not use it, mind you).

See, it's only been in the last week or so that she's started responding to things like tickling. And she's still new enough at it that, most of the time, she's not really sure how she should react. So, sometimes she'll kind of smile, others she'll fart, then others she'll just kind of squirm uncomfortably.

When this experiment started on Monday, she was smiling a fair percentage of the times when I tickled her (minus the times when she was obviously sleeping, and not just trying to sleep--those times she just got pissed or frowned a harrowing baby frown of disappointment at me). Today, though, she was barely cracking a grin at all, even when I tickled the bottoms of her feet. Not even on the feet, people! Shit is getting serious!

I'm terribly afraid that I'm permanently ruining the tickle for our child, which would be an awful blow to my repertoire of entertainment possibilities. If I need a good five minutes of distraction for Gabe, I STILL go to the tickle, and he mostly loves it (though, like the fetishist I'm reasonably sure he's going to grow up to be, he learned how to incorporate a "safe word" some time ago--it's just the word "stop," but he pretty much learned it just to get us to stop tickling him when he was tired of it). Or worse, I might be ruining her sense of humor in general. What if she'll never grow to appreciate the cathartic release that a good laugh offers--how it allows one to deal with difficult issues or situations in a non-throwing-things-at-people kind of way. Laughing is one of the things I do best--and making people laugh is something that I like to do more than pretty much anything.

I'm worried that, for the sake of a few decent nights of sleep now, I'm sacrificing the years down the road when my daughter might think I'm amusing (realizing, of course, that she'll probably have to be an adult before that happens, since kids usually think their parents are socially retarded, no matter how cool or funny they actually are--hint: I am both).

What have I done? I've tickled the will to laugh right out of her! Oh the humanity!

Or not. I'll be sure to let everyone know.