1st Post Since April! - On Sleeping Issues!

Well, we'll just say I took some time off! Truth be told, I'm in the middle of classes (going back to get my teaching certificate), being a mommy and wifie and quite frankly, it's sucked the time right away from me!

So I thought I would post quickly on something relevant to where Nathanial is in his sleeping patterns...or should I say lack of a sleeping pattern. We went on vacation, the girls in my family and I and we returned with a toddler used to doing whatever he wanted whenever he wanted including sleeping! It's been 10:00 PM some night's getting him to go to sleep.

(To those new mommies out there who are only getting 2-3 hours of sleep per night, please don't hate me. You'll understand soon. You'll start getting some good sleep, get your energy back then WHAM, teething or WHAM ear infection or WHAM baby-just-doesn't-want-to-sleep will kick in and man it will be rough!)

So, I've tried to reinforce the good ol' night time routine: dinner, play, bathtime, massage as long as he will tolerate it, book with sippy and night-night. Well, last night, it did not work. He wanted to come into the living room and watch Thomas...oh Thomas...that's a whole other post right there...whew. Anyway, I let him cry for 15 minutes and then went into his room, repositioned him, kissed him and said "Mommy loves you; night-night!" I let him cry for 5 more minutes and then returned and did the same thing over again - repositioned him, kissed him, "Mommy loves you; night-night!" I had to do this 1 more time, but finally I guess he decided to believe me because he went to sleep.

So tonight I started the bedtime routine a bit earlier and had him in his pjs and ready to go down at like 7:45. (I have noticed it's harder to enforce an early bedtime in the summer with the sunshine). He took a good bath - nice, calm, bubbles...it all went well. He fussed at me through clothing him, massaging him and then he did not want to read. He, again, wanted to leave and go into the living room. Finally I said, "Okay, I can see you don't want to read. Mommy loves you; night-night!" I put him in his bed. He found his thumb. He's been asleep ever since.

Go figure!