Nighttimes

Limelet has actually been doing a lot better, faster, with night weaning than I expected (feared?).  

I have been using a modified version of Dr. Jay Gordon's technique .  It is modified in that I am taking longer about it and doing it in a less cry-y fashion; I am being flexible and following my gut.  We did do the first three nights as per instructions.  

The first night did involve crying and wakefulness, but not nearly as much as I thought it might.  Initially he cried his little heart out when told that the nursies were sleeping.  However, I discovered that he calmed down and was satisfied thereafter with being held/carried with his head on my shoulder, much as TheLimey has always done to put him to sleep.  Limelet has never previously accepted this form of ensleeping* from me, so I was surprised he did accept it.  I was awake a lot that night getting him back to sleep.  The following couple nights, he did not cry about nursies sleeping, but accepted the shoulder instead.  

I was a bit worried about that, because one thing I actually worked at doing (a long time ago) was getting him to accept lying down and nursing to sleep instead of being carried and nursing to sleep, so at least I could lie down and semi-sleep, too.  I didn't want to regress and have to now get out of bed each time he awoke during the night.  However, I this fear didn't materialize.  In the nights following, he accepted just being held and rocked or wobbled for a few minutes while I sat up, and he went back to sleep immediately.  I was able to then segue that into me lying down and holding him on my chest, followed by rolling over and just having my arm under his head.

Because this was all working well and moving rapidly towards my goal of having him stay asleep without nursing/carrying, I decided to just continue (relatively) gradually instead of moving into the next Gordon phase which would likely involve another few nights of crying and misery.  

And in fact it's been going quickly: just 10 days ago, Limelet was still nursing back to sleep 3-5 times per night, meaning I awoke several times per night.  Night before last I awoke only twice and he fell back into deep sleep both times with very minimal intervention and within just a couple of minutes.  During the daytimes he comments happily that the nursies are awake.

I'm not counting last night as a real setback, since when he stirred at 3 or so and was very flippy, it turned out that he was sick, and threw up.  Poor little thing.  He got to have the nursies wake up after that.  But I was still awake from 3 to 4:30.

*Neologism!

Sleep!

As always, our big problem is still sleep, one way or another.  Poor Limelet is chronically sleep-deprived (as am I, of course).  

On weekends he has a decent bedtime (for him) of around 9pm.  This is because his natural nap time is from about 11-1.  But on weekdays, the day care center's nap time for every child in the place is 1-3pm.  This is really bad, because Limelet can absolutely not go to sleep at bedtime before approximately 7.5 - 8 hours after he wakes up from his nap.  Of course we thought about having them put him down earlier, but they can't really do that in a room with 10 kids all doing the same thing all at once.  The tots don't even get their little lunches until noon.  The best we have been able to do is to ask them to get him up by 2pm.  

I have a suspicion that they sort of let this 2pm time slide later and later at times, because of how hard it's been getting to get him to sleep even by 9:30.  Last night he didn't go to sleep until 11:30, and this week it's generally been 10 or 10:30.  If you go to the center between 1 and 3, all the rooms are dark and full of sleeping kids, and it's the time that the workers get their breaks.  So I imagine it's ind of hard (mentally speaking) for them to get just one kid up at 2 while all the others are still sleeping and the room is dark.

So, bedtimes are kinda hard for us at home. We have repeatedly tried the thing where you catch the earlier sleepy cycle time of 7:30 or so, which theoretically is his proper bedtime.  However, the result has invariably been that his body takes it as a nap, he sleeps for exactly 40 minutes, then wakes refreshed and bouncy to stay awake until midnight or so.  (Believe me, we have tried everything to keep him asleep at the earlier time.)

In looking at the night weaning materials, I saw one mother's account of why she decided to night wean.  It was something along the lines of, "our only time alone together is evenings, and we got tired of being interrupted every two hours to put him back to sleep."  So, what she's saying is, she and her husband actually regularly had TWO HOURS together before their kid woke up.  And I'm guessing that if they had two hours to spend, it wasn't 9:30 to 11:30, or 10 to midnight, as it would be if she had our kid, or she would have said something about the lateness.  They probably had something like 8 until 10 alone together. (Maybe that's just my fantasy, but that seems pretty common).

And so--what the heck are they complaining about?! That would be unbelievably great!  We would LOVE to have "only" two hours alone together one evening, any evening!  Or day, for that matter.

Well, anyway.  Night weaning is coming up this weekend.  I anticipate complete sleeplessness and lots of crying and emotional trauma the first several nights, by all accounts.  However, since we are prepared for it, we hope to help each other remain patient and calm in the face of all that.  We aren't making any plans for the weekend; I'm even trying to get the grocery shopping done Friday evening because I'm going to be knackered Saturday morning.

Naturally, Limelet tosses and turns all night, but right after 6am he begins sleeping like the proverbial log and is bloody hard to wake, even at 7.

I Love You, Tubes!

I haven't mentioned that Limelet has been taking (or asking for) non-squishy bedtime toys, such as his toy drill, the tube from the vacuum cleaner and an accompanying small green bouncy ball that just fits inside it, the radio-controlled car his Daddy got for Christmas, or the stickle-brick street sweeper, etc. This leads to a nursing situation that is less than comfortable for me in some cases (that drill is cold!) or just silly looking (snuggling a vacuum cleaner tube while sleepily nursing).  However, heaven forbid we turn off the lights and then discover we have to go get his drill, or whatever. Usually he'll settle for the drill.  But lately he's been waking up asking for the vacuum tube first thing in the morning.  He had a huge tantrum after Daddy put the actual vacuum away the other day, because that was his new favoritest toy ever.

Oh yeah, there's also a random funny anecdote.  Limelet has an Arthur video that shows library books opening up to disclose their contents, including (among many other things) a knight, various fish, cowboys on horses, and an unraveling mummy staggering out of a sarcophagus. I verbally labeled these items once when we were watching it.  Some time later, we watched it again and I asked him what the things were on the screen.  In reference to the mummy, he said, "Mama!"  Now every time he sees a mummy swathed in bandages in any image (comes up surprisingly often in kids' books) he points to it and gleefully exclaims "Mamaaaa!" I can't begin to imagine how he has rationalized this particular appearance of Mama.

Too Much!

I haven't blogged about Limelet in way too long; as usual because there is just too much going on with him to spend time blogging about it.  So, perhaps bullet points or highlights.

1. Counts mostly to ten, also heard to say "eighteen, nineteen, tenteen...".  Even heard him say "ninety-eight, hundred!" recently, which I guess I'm surprised they're already teaching him.

2. Sat on potty at daycare last Friday, all three times!  After vigorously refusing for months.  I've been priming him by nightly offering to let him sit on his potty after undressing for his bath, which he sometimes did momentarily. Last night he spent about 20 minutes on his potty at home, stuffing bits of toilet paper into it, which he thinks is the whole point.

3. Loves raw parsnips, as we discovered yesterday while making a vegetable stew. Turns out they are pretty good, actually.  I was letting him select veggie chunks from the tureen, and he discovered parsnips.

4. Will be undergoing night weaning as of next weekend, as Mummy is tired of 30-seconds nursings interrupting her sleep every two hours for nearly three years.  We'll be using Dr. Jay Gordon's technique, as I've never been able to quite implement the slow "unlatch before falling asleep" technique.  I'm not looking forward to it, but the AP parenting community on Yahoo recommend it.

5. Loved Christmas, and we didn't overdo it with presents.  I did make his box castle, which he learned immediately could be a refuge from bathtime.

6. Still obsessed with ducka beeps, in particular with street sweepers.  He compels us to make street sweepers out of stickle bricks (or bristle blocks, depending on which side of the Atlantic you're from).  I believe I started this with one street sweeper I made a few months back.  Those bricks fall apart constantly, leading to a constant cry of "uh-oh wheel!" And then we have to fix it.

7. I believe he may have finally produced his last milk tooth!!  He started at 4 months and has been teething at a rate of approximately one slow, sleep-interrupting, agonizing tooth per month.  I think that the 20th one erupted a couple weeks ago, though.  He's much less miserable.  We should have had stock in baby Motrin.

8. His face is developing around his eyes now, so he is starting to look more like Daddy (my eyes, Dad's face.) Before he looked more like me because his eyes were the least-amorphous part of his appearance.

9. Loves to "read" books, and will sit on the floor next to his "library" carefully examining his books (or ours; he likes chapter books, too).

10.  Is becoming very affectionate and will hug us while saying, "aaaawwwww!"  In the "oh-how-cute" tone of voice that we use with him.

11. Prefers salty to sweet snacks or foods.  I made rice pudding (the hearty kind, not the goopy kind). He opened his mouth for a taste, then immediately opened his mouth looking for a place to spit it out.  Thinking it might be a fluke, I tried again later, with the same results and a "why are you doing this to me?" expression.  Guess I'm the only rice pudding eater in the household.

I'm sure there's more, so I'll add to this later.