So after I would say a month of the whining increasing in threshold to the point where the babysitter is mentioning it and both Jeremy and I are counting down the time to her bedtime each day, it was time to stop and evaluate.
I'm still looking for the website where you can input your child's behavior and it will immediately tell you what the behavior means and how to stop it. In the absence of such a reference, however, I was left with these thoughts:
1. Children (people) do things for a reason
2. Behaviors that people keep are kept because they are (or were) successful ways of getting something the person wants or needs
3. Whining (in general) is something you do when you want something (or aren't getting what you want)
With all of those things in mind, I decided that maybe I wasn't giving Sydney something she really needed and the whining about the juice and the shoe and all that nonsense was about a missing need. Attention came readily to mind. After all, in the tiredness of late pregnancy, I was doing a lot more sitting and Jeremy was doing a lot more taking care of me, and Sydney was getting less and less of our attention. So, the easiest solution to the whining problem seemed to be to pay more attention to her.
We went on a 48 hour mission to attend to Sydney, in shifts, at all times, as an experiment. Jeremy took her to the grocery store (which she loves); I played Little People with her; we both took her to the Red Poppy Festival in town; Jeremy took her outside and played at her water table; I did puzzles with her; we both played Candy Land with her. After the experiment was over, we were left with a much happier girl whose whining had decreased to a fraction of what it was at the start of the weekend.
Another 24 hours later and I was able to check my e-mail after school without desperate pleas for attention, although I did have to make sure that I was available to color with her as soon as I was done recharging.
I don't know that I will always be able to logic through why Sydney does the things she does, but it was nice to be able to do it this time. I'm also grateful that she is letting us make it up to her (especially, and hopefully, in time for the new baby). We are now on constant Sydney attention watch, trying to keep that quality time love meter as full as possible knowing that we're going to need some reserves in a few weeks.
Some notes about Candy Land: Sydney is too young for Candy Land: the Official Rules, so we play by Candy Land: the 2 Year Old Rules. It goes like this: you pick your piece then you draw a card. You put your piece on ANY space that is the same color as your card. The next person takes his or her turn. Play continues around the board. Everyone gets to go to ANY space the same color as the color drawn, none of this nonsense about going to the NEXT space. This version, aside from being less of a headache, has many lessons: it teaches turned-based play; it teaches that you can move the RED piece to a BLUE square, which can be confusing; it teaches the art of drawing one and only one card; it teaches how to discard; and it teaches where all of the special spaces are on the board. That's a lot to master without having to worry about linear space and figuring out which of all the blue spaces on the board is the one after the one you're already on. Oh, and no worrying about winning or losing, either.
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