Silent Nights

Two and a half months now, and we've begun sleep training Mui Mui. What is sleep training, you ask? Mommy learned it from a very thick book with lots of words in small print, called "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child." To sum up the book, sleep training is basically letting your baby cry until they fall asleep. Then they'll get used to not being picked up, and learn to fall asleep on their own. The book advises that sleep training begins after 4 months, but it says if you're a very busy parent, you can begin at two months. Since our toddler keeps us just the right amount of busy to qualify as "very," we began the training a week ago.

It sounds likes such a simple thing to do - let the baby cry until they fall asleep is much easier then pacing the house with her in your arms until she falls asleep. No pins and needles, sore wrists and elbows, back aches, or risking dropping the baby because it's 3 AM and you're falling asleep while standing up. (Just pretend that's in the book and not something I actually experienced.) But when you actually begin sleep training, and hearing your baby cry and scream and wail with more tears than would fill a baby sized sponge, it seems easier to just carry her for just one more hour until she turns into a limp log of pink fuzz and fat in your arms.

After a couple of nights already, she seems to be getting better. First she started falling asleep on her own, usually in an automated swing or vibrating bouncer. Now when she's in her crib, she can cry for ten minutes instead of twenty, but not consistently. But as we learned from sleep training the first one, he now sleeps almost on cue, with no fuss or resistance. The road is hard, but the reward is worth it.

Perhaps it's her holiday gift to us, but last night was the first night she slept for six straight hours. And as I write this entry this Christmas Eve, I would like to wish all you readers out there with our family's rendition of a Christmas classic.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Baby's Firsts (Again)

Needless to say, we've been busy. Two times the babies can mean twice as much fun, four times more work, and half the amount of sleep.

With Mui Mui around, we are reminded again of many of the things we learned the first time around, that we conveniently forgot. I've heard that the painful memories, like childbirth, are actually naturally minimized in the memory, because if people remembered how difficult it is to have a baby, everyone in the world would be a single child. We forgot that newborns don't sleep through the night, have very messy diapers, and can be very loud when they cry.

Mui mui is now six weeks old, which marks a very important milestone. A six week old baby noow sleeps for longer periods than every two hours, so we've just been reminded in the past couple of days how pleasant it is to only have to wake up 2-3 times throughout the night. This means (slightly) easier days for Mommy too, so she can concentrate on the very active 19 month old dinosaur roaming the rooms of our home now, who is eating, growing, and thrashing about for most of the day.

Which leads to a first for Lucasuarus: Yesterday evening, he had his first time out when he refused to eat his dinner.

We ended up sending him to sleep without supper, which is something I've only see done on TV. He woke up exceedingly hungry this morning, of course, so we'll see if he learned his lesson tonight during dinnertime. Oddly, I realized, his time out actually freed us up to do other things, which was rather convenient.

Finding the time to write more is especially challenging during the holidays now, so I hope all you readers had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Our little turkeys are appropriately stuffed, and we're hoping to all get enough sleep to sustain us to the new year.