Because I know all you care Oh So Deeply about Xander’s sleep habits, I am dedicated a WHOLE post to them! (As a totally unrelated aside, can I just mention how great it is that I can actually log into my blog like a real live blogger type person again, and that I don’t have to type things out on my iPhone to email in?)
Night sleeping is getting back to decent, mostly, teething aside (he has four whole chompers! That he grinds together and sends me clawing up the walls to escape the sound). All of the moving around has been tough on him, so pretty much since JS left San Diego….erm….a million years ago (5 weeks?), his sleep has been pretty crappy. Up a lot, crabby in the morning, needing a bottle (or two!) at his night wakings to finally calm down. It was so hard. He only “slept through the night” for a short while, but we did get pretty used to easy night wakings: a pacifier, a pat on the back, and out the door. Getting up up, feeding him, and often changing him, MULTIPLE times a night (and often on my own since see above: JS gone) left me a total wreck. Now it’s mostly teething related, so if I’m up on it and give him a dose of ibuprofen at bedtime (IF he needs it, only), sleep is much improved.
Naps. Oh, naps. Those have not been going well. He is still in between one and two naps, all depending on when he wakes up for the day and how well he slept at night. Late wake ups (7 AM) and only brief night wakings: he can take a single nap around 11 or 12. Otherwise, he really needs two. NEEDS two, not “will take two.” When we first got to Vermont, he refused all naps for a while. Those days sucked, because he was miserably exhausted, and crabby, and JS and I only have so much patience and energy ourselves. So I put some feelers out to some of my mom friends and FB groups and came up with a few things that SEEM to be helping. Thing the One: a return of a routine. Before we moved, he was getting SO good about napping that I would just plop him down and leave. The end. HA HA HA HA. No longer. So now he gets a story and a cuddle, and, yes, a bottle. I know, I know. I wanted to get rid of them, he’s a year now, etc…But with all the changes he’s gone through, it’s really helping him transition to sleepy-time. (I am moving him away form formula and onto (lactose free) milk, though. So that’s something, right?). The second thing is: don’t freak if he doesn’t sleep. I’d get so worked up about it, and he’d pick up on my tension, and we’d both be unhappy campers. Now I go through the routine of bottle, book, snuggle, bed, but I leave some plush toys and board books in there with him. If he plays quietly, I leave him be. I do not try and “force” him to sleep by lying him back down (oh, yeah, he loves standing in his crib now; best game ever!) or rocking him or anything. After a bit (an hour or so), I’ll go get him if he cries. If he cries right away, I go in, set him down, rub his back or belly and blow him a kiss as I leave, saying “sleepy time, night night.”
It all seems to be helping…if nothing else, for my sanity. It gives me a break, even if he doesn’t officially sleep, to clean up a bit, or read, or email. More often than not, he WILL sleep, at least once a day, for a bit. And as it goes, the better he sleeps during the day, the better he sleeps at night.
I just hope that we don’t have to start all over again with the No Sleeping Nightmare when we move into the house at the end of the month.
In other news: my computer is still dead, so I’m using an “extra” of JS’s, that I thought I’d broken (the screen went all wonky), but seems to be working OK. But I did lose lots of pictures, videos, and music. I have a lot of images backed up, but until I really go through them all, I don’t know what I’ve lost. The music I’m sad about (if only for the cost of replacing it), but the baby pictures really crush me. I hope I did a good enough job of backing up.
I’m trying to get out and do a few activities with the local MOMS group each week, too. It certainly helps make the days go by faster. And poor Xander really needs to play with someone other than me every once and a while. Tomorrow we’re going to a farm! We’ll see them make cheese! Fun times.
