sweet, sweet sleep

We took Celia outside on her tricycle for the first time yesterday. She loved it! It was a sunny day, but still cold and very windy so we just covered a short loop and went home. 

 Chris played hooky from class last night, so we all got to have dinner together. Celia loves going for a car ride with Chris after dinner sometimes. They usually just go to get something at the store (Celia now asks to go to the "beer store"- haha), but Pita loves it! She thinks it's really something special to go for a "ride with Daddy". Last night I was surprised when she said "I wanna go for a ride with Daddy and Mommy!" How could I say no? Chris is obsessed with Dairy Queen, which I don't understand. Even when I ate ice cream, I always thought theirs tasted like cardboard. Anyway, we went there and Pita had her first taste of ice cream sundae. When we were done she didn't want to go home! We went to the grocery store and got a few things we needed, and then went home. It was a fun little outing, and it's always nice to have something to do during those evening witching hours when babies and toddlers can get a bit wacky. 

 

 

Now, about that sleep. We decided to put Celia back in her crib for now. She needs to get back in a good independent sleep routine, because she recently started wanting me in bed with her all the time. I did it a few times when she really did need it, she decided she loved it, and before we knew it Pita was keeping me up all night trying to call the shots on our sleeping arrangements. On Monday night, I explained to her that she would be sleeping in the crib and would not sleep in the big bed anymore. I told her that I would not come into her room during the night, and I would see her in the morning. Chris put her to bed, and as usual we heard her calling "Mommy! Mommy!" in the pitiful sounding little voice she uses when she wants to manipulate me at night :). Since she wasn't upset, we just let her call for a couple minutes. Not easy for me! When she started getting more insistent sounding, Chris went up and told her she needed to go to sleep. When he left, she cried off and on for a few minutes before he went up again. He picked her up and hugged her, told her to go to sleep, and put her back in the crib. That time she complained for all of a few seconds, and then went straight to sleep! We were shocked at how easy it was. She just needed us to set those limits and stick to them. She woke up once during the night and the same routine followed, only when Chris left her room she only cried for several seconds before going back to sleep. On Tuesday night she went right to bed, woke up once and called for me during the night, and went back to sleep without crying at all. Last night I put her to bed, no problem, and she didn't make a peep all night! Hopefully this will continue. Every time we put her to bed now, I remind her that I will not be coming in to sleep with her so she can just go right to sleep. And she does :). 

I usually lean toward an attachment parenting style, but that doesn't mean you don't set limits. We let things go for a while to see if it would work, and eventually decided that Pita needed some limits imposed in order to sleep well. We used Richard Ferber's book to help Celia sleep when she was 9 months, and I pulled it out again this week. He really does take a developmental approach, and emphasizes limit setting as a way to make children feel more secure (totally true- kids are happier, more secure, and more independent when they have familiar routines and know what's expected of them). Ferber's method is often referred to as "crying it out", but it's really not that at all. He advises a progressive approach of leaving the child for increasing intervals of time, so the child always knows you're there and knows she hasn't been abandoned. It's much gentler and more appropriate than simply leaving a child to cry indefinitely. He does not support that at all. It works very quickly, too.

So, we're all well-rested here this week, and hopefully it will continue!