No way!!

Dude, no way!

Since we’ve been back from our trip, we’ve had some, eh, challenges on the sleep front. First night was so-so, the second night involved all of us being awake from 1am to 5am. It was taking for-ev-er for him to fall asleep, and our tradition has been to stay in the room with him until he does fall asleep. We were doing that under the mistaken assumption that, since this was all he has ever known, we should at least continue staying with him till sleep comes. All the other changes we’ve thrown at him, we thought this was vital to him.

Ha! Idiots.

Last night he was just running and running and running, resisting sleep despite being obviously exhausted — not upset or crying, but just bouncing off the walls. We were getting more and more frustrated with being “stuck” in his room for hours, so out of desperation, last night Seth just said, “Daddy’s going to leave now. Night-night.” I sat on the couch, watching the baby monitor with terror. He never cried. He did call for us in a nervous voice for a minute or two, asking us to come put on the covers (though we had earlier detected the covers trick was just a ruse), but within another minute or two we heard him just puttering around in there. By 15 minutes, we heard him lightly snoring.

Tonight, we decided to experiment with forgoing the whole “sit with him after stories & rocking thing”. So, I read him some stories, rocked and cuddled him for about 5 minutes, then told him it was time to go to sleep. He protested and whined, but when I laid him in his bed he willingly rolled onto his side and asked for the covers. We said “night-night” and left the room… and now it’s been about 30 minutes, and not. a. single. peep.

Why the heck didn’t we try this about 5 million years ago?? It just shows how little faith we had in our own child’s resilience.

Well, since I’ve been given an unexpected bit of time tonight, I’m off to do some dishes. Yea!

Oh, and some pictures of our fun evening:

Playing with flour & sugar in the living room (despite the sheet, not the brightest idea, but we’re TIRED of being cooped up inside!)

Seth always does this funny thing with his tongue between his lips when he’s really concentratingon something. You can kind of see it on Grayson here.

The Aftermath, and the willing vacuum helper