We may be on to something here...

I never imagined that motherhood would sometimes resemble high school chemistry experiments. But it definitely does from time to time.

Anyone who has followed our blog, seen me in daily life with toothpicks holding my eyes open, or had the pleasure of getting one of "those" phone calls after a bad night with Joshua knows that sleeping is not his forte...not even close. Well, I've read all I can read. And the part of this whole thing that feels like Chem I is the process of experimentation. We try things- even things that don't seem like they'd make much sense. Is it the bedtime routine? Is the room too light? Too dark? Is he going to bed too early? Too late? Did he eat something for supper that is causing him not to sleep? You can seriously drive yourself to drink over this stuff. So, you go about your experiment changing one little thing at a time. Mostly, at least in the case of our son, it makes absolutely no difference. And the way you keep yourself from being committed is that you figure, "well, there's one more thing that it CAN'T be". Until...eureka...you find something that works. That's kind of where we are today, after (gasp) two full nights of sleep from Joshua.

My cardinal sin as a mother was to get him used to being rocked to sleep. Normally, I rock with him and read Dr. Seuss books until I can't rhyme one more silly word with another one. His latest obsession is "Yertle the Turtle". Very cute if you haven't had the pleasure of reading that one a million times. So on Sunday night, he was snoring away in my lap until I moved him into his bed to sleep. The eyeballs popped open and I figured I was in for another round of the Doctor...but instead, he eventually closed those beautiful peepers and went to sleep. We've exchanged the air conditioning in our house for the fall fresh air, so it's been a bit chilly at night time. I then covered him up with an afghan that he couldn't really roll out from under, so he couldn't get too cold during the night at wake up from that. I didn't hear another thing from him until 6 the next morning. Last night I figured I'd try the same thing. Yertle the Turtle until just about asleep, then into bed. (We had to do that twice last night.) Then he fell asleep...got the afghan treatment and slept until 5:15. I know most moms wouldn't celebrate a 5:15 awakening, but for us, this is a major victory.

So, that was a very long way of saying that we're doing better and we'll keep working on this new program we've developed. Keep your fingers crossed!