In Training

There's a couple monkeys in our house that don't count sleeping as one of their gifts and talents. I won't name any names................

I have such vivid memories of "sleep training" Sam. Fighting to keep him in his bed. Baby Wise, Ferber, the family bed....we tried it all. And guess what? He eventually slept in his own bed all through the night. To this day he is still a night owl but that's just who he is....much like his mama. When the other girls occassionally had sleeping issues it didn't bother us because for one..we don't mind the company in bed and two...I knew eventually they'd get the hang of it. Our smallest sweet cherub however is not catching onto the sleep thing and I will take most of the responsibility for that. In an effort to keep the rest of the family sleeping I have given into her middle of the night fits and get up with her every night....still....she is almost two...in two weeks! I know...way too old to still be waking every night. A couple weeks ago I declared we would be in training{sleep that is} as soon as the kids were done with school. Last night was our first night of training. Not so good. Amelia went to bed with Rock and Lu and I made our camp downstairs. As with every night Jo went down like a champ and just like every night she woke up about midnight. She screamed for about 20 minutes before the gagging started so I went in to comfort her, find her blanket and her binky and then laid her back down. This only made things worse. I tried laying back down but the screaming was so loud. Sleep was not happening so I sat on the stairs with my head in my hands and prayed for her. This of course brought the memories flooding in. When we were training Sam I would sit on the stairs and pray and more often than not cry too. So this was the exact spot I was sitting when Sam woke from Jo's cries. He came out to check on the situation. "Wow, somebody's crabby" he said and then went to use the bathroom. On the way back to his room he rubbed my back for a minute and said "hang in there mom." Full circle? How sweet that my first terrible sleeper was now encouraging me to stay in the fight with my latest tough sleeper! So I hung in there and yes, eventually sleep happened. Night one down.