Breaking the Law

Every morning Jack and Elliot get up, get dressed, then come upstairs to eat breakfast. It doesn't make for the cleanest school clothes, but it makes getting up and getting ready go quickly and smoothly. Mattie still goes to pre-school, so he gets to leave later in the morning. We've always let him eat breakfast in his pajamas, then get dressed after the big boys leave. But, this hasn't been working so well lately. The more I expect him to undress and dress independently, the more he has been digging his heels in and doing nothing. So, I decided to take a short cut, and get him dressed at night. Now, on school nights, he picks out his clothes for the next day and wears them to bed. What a difference! He gets out of bed, and is practically ready to walk out the door. Everything was going great, until Jack remembered something he had read. "Sleeping in your day clothing is against the law in Boston." So, while we have solved one problem, we have simultaneously created a new one. Now, mornings go smoothly, but bedtime tortures Jack!

Sleep

Sleep, is perhaps the most painful sacrifice of parenthood. Some kids are great sleepers, others are terrible, but almost all kids go through bouts of night wakings, depriving their parents of something they can't do their job without. We have had our share of it all, but it seems that we've been in a particularly long-lasting rut since Theo was born. He is not a great sleeper. Between our travels, teething (he has 3 of 4 molars at this point,) and illnesses, the last three months have been pretty bad. Add in the fact that he only sleeps 9 1/2 hours at night, and prefers to rise between 6 and 6:30, and it can be rough. His brothers like to do their part as well, choosing the nights that Theo sleeps soundly for their nighttime troubles. As I write this, Jack is upstairs in the bathroom, jolted awake by a full bladder, which resulted in a night terror. He hadn't had one in over a year, but his success with nighttime dryness has brought them back again. If he has to go to the bathroom early in the night, waking disturbs his sleep

patterns enough to launch a night terror. So, he's doing a beautiful job staying dry, but we're back to getting up to put him back to bed now too. Thankfully, there's Mattie. He is our best sleeper. I asked Ted last night if he could remember the last time Mattie woke up in the middle of the night. He couldn't. Neither can I. He sleeps from 7 to 7. I like to fantasize about what my life would be like if all of my kids slept like that. Ahhhh. Until that happens, I hope that you'll ignore my puffy eyes. And if I'm spacey, forgetful, or slow to respond, just nod and smile. Someday the boys will be teenagers, and sleep-in until noon. I just might then too.

Sleeping Like a Baby

A while back, Ted shared a joke with me that he heard at a conference. Two insurance salesmen were talking to each other, discussing their business in light of the poor economy. The one salesman asked the other how he slept at night. The reply was that he slept like a baby: he woke up every two hours screaming.

I think of that joke often in my daily life with the fab four. I just returned to the table after putting Theo back to sleep, a skill that has become painfully routine this week in VA. Theo, like Mattie, has been a great sleeper since birth. We followed the same routine with both boys - we swaddled them from day one, and always tried to put them down awake, but sleepy. But, something happened after we arrived in VA this week. Theo has started waking up at night again, and has suddenly stopped taking his normal 3 hour afternoon nap. Overall, he really still sleeps very well for a 5 month old. But, he is not sleeping nearly as well as he has all summer. I am very unhappy about it. The most frustrating part for me is the disruption to his afternoon nap. He has been going down like usual, but waking up after an hour or an hour and half, crying loudly. Normally, he wakes up from his naps very happy. My rule for babies and napping is that anytime a baby wakes up crying, he didn't sleep long enough, and needs to go back to sleep. So, the first day Theo woke up crying, I tried nursing him back to sleep. It worked. Unfortunately, he has repeated that pattern every day this week. Each time, I'm stuck sitting in a dark room, nursing him back to sleep, then holding him quietly until he goes into a deep enough sleep to put back into his bed. After that, he goes on to sleep another 2 hours. So, he's still taking his long afternoon nap, just in two segments, joined together by a breastfeeding session. Part of me wants to blame Theo's bad sleep on traveling, but we were at my parents' house last week, and he slept fine there. Something else is going on.

Having gone through this many time before, I know this is just a phase. This too shall pass. It's not really much of an inconvenience with Ted and so many other relatives here to help. But, I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I'm not happy that my otherwise perfect baby has ceased sleeping perfectly. And, next week I may be in even more trouble. School starts for Jack, Elliot and Mattie. I will be doing pick-ups at two different schools from 2:15 until 3:45 each afternoon. I'm not exactly sure where, when or how Theo will sleep then. I guess the best I can hope for, is that he'll sleep like an adult.