I’m in the middle of a double paper effort, thus my silence this week.
M. has continued to do very well in her bed. From Saturday night, when it took and hour to get her to settle and sleep, we were down to only 15 minutes on Tuesday. Last night was my first night on my own with her, as S. went back to work. So I was a bit nervous about how she would do. She had a late nap, so when her usual bedtime of 7:00 rolled around, she was in no mood to go to bed. That’s good. With daylight savings time just two weeks away, we’ll soon be in full sun at 7:00 so she needs to learn how to stay up until 8:00. We played, watched a video, and played some more. Finally, at 8:15, I picked her up and figured it was time to try whether she was ready or not. She never really fought me, but did seem more interested in continuing to play than to fall asleep. She tossed and turned, laughed, jabbered at me, and demanded her water so she could have a drink. Finally, she flipped onto her side, put her arm up, waved at me, and said, “Night night, daddy.” I left and did not return to her room until 6:45 this morning, when she woke up happy. Nearly a perfect night!
One more quick funny story. Tuesday night, she had been in bed for about an hour when she started yelling. I went up, walked into her room, and started towards her bed. I got almost all the way to her bed when I walked into something and nearly fell across her bed. There she was, standing up, next to her bed. Fortunately, I caught myself before I sent her onto the floor as well. She learned in just three nights how to get out of her bed! She was upset but clearly tired, so I tried to find her binky, which I assume was what she got out of bed to search for. I patted around her bed, fluffed the covers, flipped the pillow, but couldn’t find it. I ran over to the light switch, flipped it on, and prepared to do a quick once-over of the area around her bed. As soon as the light went on, she threw her hands over her eyes and started screaming louder. I spied the binky on her bed, and flipped the light off just as she took a step towards a pillow next to her bed. Suddenly in the dark again, she caught her toe on the edge and tripped over it. More screaming. I was trying hard not to laugh, as she had been stumbling around like a drunk in a movie, zigging and zagging while she tried to keep her eyes covered. Fortunately, as soon as I put her in bed, gave her the binky, and covered her up, she was ready to go back to sleep. She never did any climbing out of her crib, so we’ve been lucky not to have her wandering around the house at night. It looks like those days (or nights) are over.