I'm Thankful for

Yeah, that sounds like a Thanksgiving post title, doesn't it? Thanksgiving was over a week ago you say?


Becky with Will trying to lick Jack's ear on Thanksgiving.

I feel so un-blogivated (motivated to blog) lately. I don't know why; I love blogging. I missed my "links of the week" and "what I cooked last week posts," I blame Thanksgiving for really throwing me off my schedule. I didn't even write my Thanksgiving post. Haven't been doing much blog reading lately either.

Oh well. Instead of trying to make up for the missed posts, I think I'll just resume them this week. Except "links of the week" might be more like "links from the recent past."

I will tell you what I'm thankful for though. This year, I'm most thankful for The Baby Whisperer. We started trying the "Pick-up/Put-down" method from this book again the night before Thanksgiving and it has gone really well! We had tried it before when Will was 4 months old and it did not work at all, but this time has been great.

Previously, it was normal for him to wake up 5-8 times during the night and sleep for a maximum stretch of 3 hours (if we were lucky). The first night we tried this (well, Shawn did the work), if I remember correctly, he only woke twice! Or was it once?! That we can live with. It wasn't easy by any means, but it's getting better. The first night it took about an hour and a half to get him to sleep, the second, an hour, and less from then on. Some nights Shawn hasn't had to pick him back up at all. Now it's normal for him to wake once or twice during the night (once for milk) and go back to sleep fairly easily.



Naps are a different story though. Will was a good napper before this, but he was napping in the carseat, so we had to stop that and it was hard. Naps are my territory, since I'm the one home with him during the day, and I don't deal with his crying very well. For the first few days I was doing his naps, he didn't nap at all. Or, if he did nap, it was in the afternoon and just for 45 minutes, then I couldn't get him back to sleep. One day, he was so exhausted from not napping that he fell asleep in the highchair after lunch. This does not happen, he is not a fall-asleep-anywhere baby, I was in shock.

Friday, I think I broke the nap curse. Really, I think I just figured out the right amount of time that he can handle being awake for so that he's tired enough, but not overtired. Both naps were around 1 hour 20 minutes that day!

He's napping as I type this, praying to sail past the 45-minute mark today as well! But hey, 45 minutes is better than nothing. Update: Didn't make it past 30, but I got him back to sleep for a few minutes.