"He is just the sweetest thing ever. I'm so happy he's here."
Thanks, Miss Sharon and Miss Lynne. I've often thought he's pretty sweet, but I'm probably a little partial. I'm glad you think so too. Then, this morning when I went in, the girl who is there in the morning before the regular ladies start told me she was very excited because she started covering the baby room over the lunch hour and yesterday she held Connor the whole time. She said he is so pleasant and that Miss Sharon commented the other day "we need 8 Connors!"
Anyway, we had a nice weekend. On Thursday, Collin and Emily came home from Colorado and stopped in Williamsport for the night before going to a wedding in the Finger Lakes on Friday. Debbie was leaving for Florida on Friday to watch Julia while Allison is in Hawaii so she wanted us to all go out to dinner on Thursday night. We went to Tags. It was a little disappointing and certainly not what it was in its glory days. Long wait, no ambiance, and the food made more than one of us sick. Oh well, at least the company was good. Connor wasn't as excited to see Collin and Emily as the rest of us though, and slept through dinner:
We didn't do anything exciting on Friday night. We did, however, start sleep training. Since I've been back to work, I've been really struggling with having to get up at least once, often twice, a night with Connor. He's a big, healthy boy and everything I've read indicates that by this age he does not NEED to eat in the middle of the night. Can't really blame him, he's just like his mom and dad - the boy just LIKES to eat. And chit-chat, be held, etc. in the middle of the night. Anyway, after talking to all of my friends who are moms (including three doctors), I decided to take the plunge into sleep training.
From what I've read, this is a fairly controversial topic. The purpose is to let the baby learn how to soothe himself back to sleep. There are varying degrees of the "cry it out" method, ranging from cold turkey to easing in to it by going in at set intervals and patting/speaking softly to the baby. There is plenty of literature saying that any version of "cry it out" is cruel and unhealthy, while advocates of the method say that the temporary "trauma" the child feels is far outweighed by the benefits of healthy sleep habits that result. So, I decided to give it a go. I was told it wouldn't be easy, so I thought I was prepared, but I had no idea how hard that first night would be. I put Connor to bed around 10pm. That is a little later than normal, and he's usually sleeping when I put him in his crib, but that night he was sleepy but still awake. About 15 minutes after I put him down, he started crying. I had decided that I was going to try the cold turkey approach and not go in at all. It was torture. It wasn't just boo-hoo-hoo-ing and wimpering, it was scream-your-lungs-out and choke-on-your-tears. All the wine in the world wouldn't have made me feel better. I sat in my bed texting Lisa, knowing that she would still be up on the west coast. I basically told her I was imagining poor Connor turning purple and having all the blood vessels in his eyes popped and asked her who would pass out first - me or him. While waiting for her responses, I was feverishly researching on my phone articles about sleep training, trying to reassure myself that doing this would not traumatize him to the point that he developes issues later in life, and by that I mean paints his fingernails black and wears spiked dog collars and combat boots to school. Lisa's helpful advice included "you should make sure all the lights are off and open his door 2 inches and smell for barf." As we were approaching 90 minutes, I almost caved and went in and got him, but I decided to give it 5-10 more minutes.I'm so glad I did, because after 93 minutes, he FINALLY tuckered himself out, quieted down, and went to sleep. He didn't wake up until after 5am on Saturday morning. And, he was still all smiles and so pleasant when he woke up, so I felt a little less guilty.
Saturday was a pretty dreary day, but we decided to take a little drive to the annual Canton Apple and Cheese Festival. It is about 45 minutes away and we've gone almost every year - they have all sorts of vendors and food, and it is nice to see the fall foliage on the way up. Because it was rainy and muddy, we didn't want to bother with our current stroller since it is not meant for anything other than flat pavement and Target, so Connor got to be a little joey in the Ergobaby. It was actually a lot chillier in Canton than Williamsport so I'm sure Connor enjoyed the extra warmth.
We were only there about an hour but managed to stuff ourselves with good festival food and capped off the trip with delicious homemade apple dumplings with ice cream.
After we got home on Saturday we watched some college football before going over to Debbie's house, where Collin and Emily were staying. We ordered pizza and watched the start of the game. I could tell Connor was starting to get sleepy, so around 9 I took him home, gave him a bath and put him to bed. I caught the end of the ND game (5-0, yeah!) and waited for the misery of sleep training round 2 to begin. He woke up around 1am and this time, to my frayed nerves' delight, he decreased his crying time to about 25 minutes. That was still hard, but much more tolerable. Again, he slept until about 5am on Sunday morning and was just as sweet as ever.
On Sunday we decided to take the dogs up to Blockhouse and let them run around since they were feeling a little neglected lately. Baby Linn got strapped in the Ergobaby again and we hiked about a mile into the trails and a mile out. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures to share, but they all would have involved the dogs covered in mud. Which they kindly removed from themselves in the back of my car while waiting for us to have the Oktoberfest buffet the caretakers had prepared for Sunday dinner. Oh well, at least it was contained to the back and they enjoyed themselves and got some of their energy out. Connor was an angel while we were eating and everyone commented on how sweet and happy he is. We enjoyed our lunch of German inspired dishes, so much so that Baby Linn and I had to take a long nap when we got home! Sleep training round 3 went okay on Sunday night - he was asleep when I put him to bed and he woke up around midnight and cried for about 22 minutes again, maybe even less. Is it bad that by that point I didn't feel as bad anymore and ended up falling back to sleep right around the time he did?
I am thrilled to report that on Monday night Connor slept from 9pm - 5am, straight through, no tears! I thought it may have just been a fluke, but last night, he went to bed again around 9, and this is what I found when I went in at 6am:
Still sleeping at 6am - I was already showered, had the laundry in the dryer, and fed the dogs!
Fingers crossed that this is the start of something beautiful!!! All my friends said it would be about 3 or 4 nights but eventually he would get it and be able to soothe himself back to sleep should he get up in the middle of the night, especially since he knows he's not automatically going to get fed or held if he crys long enough.
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