The Joey Method

I've been fairly successful lately at putting Joey down to sleep; we've developed a method, you see. Some people like the Ferber method. I use the Joey method. I'm not going to lie to you; there's a lot of yelling. (Of course, that's the case with a lot of things that Joey does...)

The way it works is like this: he gets sleepy. I bring him up to his room, with dim lights and white noise. I wrap him up in his soft cozy blanket and hold him in my lap to rock him. Often, I tell him the story of Cinderella. I am soothing, gentle, sleep-inducing. For his part, he screams bloody murder and strains to get away from me, kicking his feet and arching his back. His one free arm (the other is in my armpit) whacks at my face and punches at my eyes. He sounds both horrifically frustrated and imbued with a sort of demonic fury.

We begin, you see, at fairly different places on the sleep spectrum.

His downfall is the soother. Or maybe The Soother. Rubbing the bridge of his nose makes his eyes close when he's calm, but The Soother is like a shot of morphine. I pop it in mid-howl, and he suckles it like a drowning man latching onto a tree branch. His flailing stops for a moment, and he is susceptible to the nose-rub. (I do not miss my chance.) He never stops making noise, though. His former high-volume banshee impression is now the sound of a puppy that needs to pee. I rub his nose and gently close the lids of eyes that are already defocussing.

It is at about this point that he realizes what I'm doing, and he leaps into action to punish me for my insolence. His eyes pop open, and his howls resume. He beats me about the face and ear (he can really only reach one from his angle). I remove the soother -- sorry, The Soother -- and let him yell for fifteen seconds or so. Then I give it back to him, and it's like it's the first time he's ever had it. Again, I quickly press my advantage, soporific-ing for all I'm worth.

The cycle goes on for about 10 minutes, with gradually less and less yelling, until finally the whimpering becomes murmuring, which becomes occasional grunts as his eyes roll back in his head. When he's quiet and limp, I place him delicately in his crib, where he will typically rouse a little and start waving both arms, maybe giving his fans one last show. I hold his arms down (careful not to let him grab my fingers -- I'd never get away) until he sleeps. For now.

It's a fairly consistent pattern at this point, and I've discovered that I can handle the howling when I know it's going to end soon. I'm pretty sure that this is a universal methodology.

I'm thinking of writing a book.