You've heard the horror stories from other parents. They've told you how they made the mistake of doing, or not doing X and now they're stuck with a child who won't sleep well, doesn't eat cheese, has to have the one special blanket to sleep, etc.
We have tried and continue to try and never make a bad habit develop with the children. We fail, regularly. It only takes a few days to set a precedence and the babies know it. It takes longer to break the habit if you didn't realize it early on. But the battle continues.
Lately, we don't know if my son is "wailing" or making the ambulance siren sound in the middle of the night because he wants to have someone come up and put the blanket on him, or if there is really something wrong, like a nightmare. We've done it for a while now; it doesn't take long and he doesn't do it all night. But there aren't many nights he doesn't need at least one settling.
When we moved my daughter in with him last month, we would hurry upstairs at the first sound of crying so he wouldn't wake her up. Did we reinforce something? He looks asleep almost every time we go up to settle him, but does he register that we've arrived (or more to the point, that we failed to arrive.)
It turns out my daughter can sleep through fog horns, thunder storms, marching bands going down the hall and yes, my son wailing for twenty minutes. We tested him last night. We had resolve. He escalated to the point that we wondered if something was wrong. Was he sick? Had he messed up his pants? Was his leg wedged in the bed?
No. He was fine. Until he sensed you were going back to bed. Or, so it seemed. And he may have had something wrong. But we saw no itching. He had no fever. He had had a good amount of milk shortly before bed so he should have been full. And yet nothing seemed to soothe him.
Until he was taken out of the crib, something we rarely, if ever do. That's one thing we've done well with both babies. When I did it he tried to lay on me, but I'm not that comfortable and he's never gone to sleep in people's arms (another intentional decision) so I put him back to bed.
My husband got him out and he wanted to get out of his arms...and he brought over a book...at two-thirty in the morning. I came upstairs to find the happiest, most delighted, giggling, infuriating, baby. He was so cute because he was thrilled to be out of the bed. All worries gone. But was he hungry? We took him downstairs and he literally bounced into the pantry and asked for puffs. He giggled and smiled and did more dancing because he was getting food in the middle of the night. He didn't want much and he wasn't thirsty.
We put him back to bed, only to have the wailing resume. So tonight, we will be at it again, trying to let him work it out for himself and trying to sleep downstairs with a siren just above our heads.
The Big Boy Update: Loves shoes. Your shoes, his shoes, anyone's shoes. He wants to put on his shoes (by asking you to put them on.) He will bring you shoes and try and put your foot into the shoe. He will try to put your shoes on and if you help him, he will try to clomp around the house.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Spikey hair. Her hair is growing and it's still white. She has a little spikey head now. Soon it's going to start looking like little girl hair and not old man head I hope.
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