3 years difference

Ever see a picture of one of your kids and get a flashback of them as an infant?  That happened to me when I saw this pic:

3 Years ago.  Same beach towel.  Same cute kiddo sleeping at the pool.

And again!  Same beach towel (we have about a dozen different ones)

And a sweet 6 month old boy after his poolside nap :)

Crack of Dawn

Despite all our previous efforts - late bedtimes, short naps, even no naps - Elliot remains an early riser.  This isn't conducive to anyone else sleeping late, especially Noah who, by week's end, is usually tired and running behind in the sleep department.  And he's not a quiet early riser.  

For this reason, I often take him out of the house when he wakes up early on weekends so Noah (and occasionally Mandy) can try to sleep late.  In the winter, it's too cold for a walk or bike ride, so sadly we are a well-known feature at Starbucks at that early hour.  Elliot picks out his chocolate milk, and politely tells the barista that his daddy wants some coffee.

We then sit and talk over our respective drinks for awhile, and chat about his week.  Then if it's still too early to go home, we cruise around the Plaza for a little while and look at the fountains and lights, and the moon if it's up. He loves the dark morning time, like me.  Sometimes when its warm enough, we walk over the bridge, and look at the 'fountain' in the middle of Brush Creek.  

I enjoy the time alone with him, listening to him chatter away.  These quiet times will disappear soon enough.

Sweet Dreams

One of the best sounds in the world has to be listening to your child belly-laugh in their sleep.

I'm couldn't quite tell what Noah was saying, but it was clear that his mom was doing something to make him laugh.

I still have to pinch myself

Today Elliot woke up pretty early.  He's still an early bird and tends to get up early, but lately we can often get him to go back to sleep.  I used to just ignore him until 6am making that the time I was willing to let him get up for the day.  Lately though I go in there and tell him to go back to sleep, get him settled on his pillow pet, teddy in hand and blankie all fixed.  A lot of times he'll go back to sleep for quite awhile.  Twice this week I had to wake him up to take Noah to school.  Well today he was up pretty early again and came downstairs for the day at 6:20.

After lunch, but still a little earlier than his naptime he came up to me and said "lay on pillow pet.  Go to Bed."  I asked him if he wanted to go to sleep and he said "Yeah.  I take a nap."    To not only have a good sleeper, but a child who ASKS to take a nap?!  How did I ever get so lucky?  I do not take it for granted.  Thank you God for blessing me with a good little sleeper in Elliot.

Sleeping on his beloved pillow pet

This is what he looks like when Noah & I wake him up everyday.  The kid will nap forever, if we let him.

"Honk Honk! Beep Beep!"

Yesterday I was rocking Elliot for a couple minutes before laying him down for his nap. I gave him his stuffed dino to cuddle and told him to close his eyes. He put his hand over his eyes with his fingers spread and eyes open peeking out. Then he put his hand on my eyes. Then he squeezed my nose and said "honk honk! beep beep!". It was so cute and funny. At that point I had to just lay him in his bed and tell him to go to sleep and leave. Nothing calming about that pre-nap routine. But it sure was cute.

Noah & Amelia camping out

We made Noah & Amelia a bed on the 3rd floor on an air mattress. The first night was interesting. They were both enthusiastic about camping out on the 3rd floor together. Noah was exhausted as he'd gotten up that morning early and they were going to bed late. We set up a monitor and were listening to them. Talking, Talking, Talking and Talking. We heard them talk about dragons and bad dreams. At one point Amelia said she'd give Noah one of her dreamcatchers to catch his bad dreams. It was so cute.

Then, like a typical man we heard Noah say "Can we talk about this in the morning? I'm getting tired".

And like a typical woman, Amelia kept gabbing. It was so funny.

She's a cuddler and has to be touching. He came downstairs at 4am saying she was too close and he was going to fall out. When Paul took him upstairs Noah had only a couple inches, but was unwilling to "trade" sides. So Paul just moved Amelia over. Since then we put a pillow between them to help keep Amelia from scooting Noah out of bed and it's worked out great.

It's a bear!!!

Even though he’s four, we still use a monitor in Noah’s room. I’m not sure when parents normally stop, but it is hard to hear him from our room, and even though it’s rare, he occasionally gets up at night thinking that it’s morning, and goes downstairs.


As a result, we sometimes hear him talking in his sleep, which is pretty cute, and every once in a while we have to rush in there to talk him down from some nightmare he’s having (monsters, bugs, dinosaurs, etc).

About 3:45 this morning he woke up and I could hear his door open on the monitor, so I jumped out of bed to intercept him. When I ran into him in the hallway, he said “I just wanted you to sleep in my bed, daddy”, as if it were something that just happened to cross his mind in the middle of the night, and he was coming in to get me.

I took him in to the bathroom, then walked him back to his bed and lay down with him so he would go back to sleep. I started to hear him breathing deeply and I was about halfway dozed off myself when he suddenly yelled “Don’t let that polar bear get me daddy!!!!”

Now, it was iffy anyway whether I could get back to sleep after getting up at 3:45 AM, but until then I had a fighting chance. However, I was not expecting any noise as I tried, much less shouting in my ear. I laid there for a few moments, heart now beating fast; wondering where in the world that came from when it occurred to me that I was wearing a big, white polar bear on my chest from the charity run t-shirt that we got last weekend.

Sweet nap

Noah has had a sleep deficit the past week. It only takes one night and it is hard for him to "catch up". Even if he sleeps all night seemingly well, it's like he just needs a good long nap to catch up. Not easy for this guy. From day one he fights it.

Well sleep won the other day. It won for 3 hrs and 4o minutes when I finally decided to wake him up. He was the sweetest boy in the world after that. We let him close down the pool that night and I took him on a late bike ride as I knew he wouldn't be ready for bed at his usual hour. Still he was asleep for the night by 10pm. Not bad for such a long nap.

I had to snap this pic when he stuck his butt up in the air like a baby. So cute!

A (Good) Day In the Life...

The morning started early - as Mandy mentioned earlier, Elliot's molars were keeping things lively last night, and Noah had had enough by a little after 6:00 AM.

You can always tell what kind of night your child has had with the first greeting of morning, sometimes with even the first look in their face. As I entered the room, I didn't get the usual "Good Morning Daddy!!" sweetness I'm used to and I could tell by the look on his face that he was still tired (as if I didn't already know it was coming by the number of times I put him back to sleep). No matter. He's up, I'm up - we're not going back to bed, now it's just a matter of limiting the collateral damage while others are still sleeping.

I could tell Mandy was getting Elliot back to sleep, so I tried to get him to tiptoe downstairs. Getting him to the bathroom for the first time each morning requires a negotiation process that I probably invest far too much into. No skin off my nose if he pees his pants, right? It would probably teach him a lesson. But, for whatever reason, I feel obligated to get him on the toilet for the first pee of the day. If you've ever seen the scene Tom Hanks did in "A League of Their Own", you know how that goes.

Once that project is completed, Noah asks me to play with him, which normally is the saddest request I deal with every day. Most days, I am rushing off to work as he asks and begs, and I have to tell him why I can't stick around and read him a book/play hide and seek/watch Max and Ruby with him. Since I'm not rushing off to work today, I tell him "ok", much to his delight.

He decides we need to play "puzzles", and we put his Dora the Explorer puzzle together many times over the next half-hour or so. Sometimes he does it and I can occasionally give advice (which is wrong on its face - see "teenage years"), sometimes we "take turns", which means I start the puzzle, and he must finish it - my contributions during my turn are usually rejected within two or three puzzle pieces. This is fun for me, a rare treat; playing with him, and taking things at his pace, with no particular place to be is not something that happens often.

After a while, he says he is hungry, and asks me for pancakes - something I made him last weekend. I find being the provider of anything with sugary syrup on it probably puts you ahead of the game in the "popular parent" category. But since I enjoy making the boys breakfast, I oblige. Mandy brings Elliot downstairs as I'm making them, and I throw him into the mix and let her (futilely) attempt some more sleep. Elliot may not have many teeth yet, but he's sure not opposed to exposing the ones he does have to potential cavities through the syrup-laced pancakes.

At some point, Mandy gets back up and helps me get them ready for Gymboree (pronounced "Jamboree" by Noah), another activity I've missed out on lately by being too involved in work. Elliot, still teething, quickly makes friends of all the parents by slobbering on all of the toys/balls/slides in the place. By the time he's done, it looks like someone has walked around the room in wet socks.

We head to Lowes for some household maintenance items, with Noah asking me why I'm "looking at directions" - checking the GPS as I drive. I tell him a dozen different explanations, hoping one of them will keep him from asking again, but to no avail. Finally we get there, get our stuff and get home. On the way home, Elliot looks like he's getting ready to fall asleep. I've never been able to master Mandy's skill of getting him unbuckled from his car seat and into his crib without waking him up, so I desperately try to keep him awake. Mostly by throwing stuff back at him to play with - painter's tape, bottled water, my cell phone. At one point, I even prompt Noah to annoy his little brother.

It backfires. Usually I can get him to bed by walking him around, but today he's having none of it, and cries hysterically as I try to put him to sleep. I relent and bring him back down stairs to play until he's ready for nap time. Noah's not much better, and starts sobbing when Elliot somehow manages to change the channel of the show he's watching. In-con-sole-able. That boy desperately needs a nap too.

Mandy arrives just before I get halfway through my mental plans to run away from home, and saves the day. I take Noah to lunch at Chick-fil-A to get a "Chicken Parfait" (really a yogurt parfait). He spots the costumed Chick-fil-A cow and anxiously awaits his turn to high-five him as he makes the rounds, alternatively making kids' day and giving kids nightmares. I hear laughing and hysterical screaming wherever he goes.

Shortly after that we're on the road. I'm driving around, hoping that Noah will humor me in a rare act, and fall asleep for a nap at a reasonable hour. About five minutes later, he's asleep. I don't care how long he naps, just that he gets something in to make the rest of the day more bearable. I gas the car up, lay back my seat and join him for a brief doze in the parking lot. A half hour later, I arrive back at home, get him out of the car and fully expect him to wake up, but after setting him on the couch, he pulls a blanket over him and goes back to sleep until his brother wakes him up an hour later.

The boys and I go on bike and wagon rides in the rain, as Mandy runs a few more errands, and after most of a day of crying, whining, playing etc, we call Mandy's mom who graciously accepts an invitation to come over at the last minute and watch the boys while we decompress at a local sushi joint.

The unexpectedly biggest treat of the day comes when we put the boys to bed. Usually our routine is bathtime, then Mandy takes Elliot and puts him to bed, and I take Noah and read him stories and put him to bed. Noah almost never naps, since it becomes an almost-impossible job to get him to sleep at a reasonable hour, and tonight I started thinking his almost two hour nap might have been a bad idea.

As I start reading to him, he gets the giggles, and then the full-on laughs. He's jabbering a mile a minute as I'm trying to read him a book. I'm trying, without success, to keep him reasonably quiet while Elliot is going to sleep. Trying to keep him quiet is not unusual - Noah doesn't have an "inside" voice and an "outside" voice, he has a "loud" voice, and a "shouting-at-the-person-next-to-you-at-a-concert" level voice. But this time, he is just genuinely laughing his ass off, and it's hard not to get infected by the pure joy. Pretty soon, he's making me laugh too, and my efforts to quiet him lose what little credibility they had to begin with.

Finally, I pull him over to me, look in his face with a serious look, and tell him if he continues, I will have to quit reading and turn off the light and we'll have to go to bed. He's half smiling at me as I tell him this, and when I finish says, "But Daddy, you're so funny" and starts laughing again. It's not as funny in the retelling, but I started laughing too.

Later - much later - I ask him what his favorite part of the day was, as I do every night before bed. Usually he tells me something we (or he and Mandy) did during the day, but tonight he responds with a smile: "going to sleep".

Mine too.

Sleep

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one - Leo J. Burke

When you make that happy decision to have kids, what doesn’t cross your mind is that it may be years before you sleep well again, and what a miscalculation that might be. As I write this, at 2:45 in the morning, I can hear Elliot crying upstairs, and feet padding across the room to take care of him. This has been week four, five maybe, of Operation No Sleep - our kids’ plan to rule the house by rendering us ineffective through sleep deprivation.

The feeling of sleepiness when you are not in bed, and can't get there, is the meanest feeling in the world. ~Edgar Watson Howe

For no reason we could determine, E was up most of the night. Noah got up several times as well, maybe because of Elliot, but more likely because that’s just what he does - he tends to want to get up and “play” around the 2:00-4:00 hours, and then again around 5:30 or 6:00. I’d let Noah do his thing if it weren’t for the prospect of being the next father they were discussing on the morning’s news whose toddler they found 3 miles from the house wandering around in bitterly cold temperatures.

Without enough sleep, we all become tall two-year-olds. ~JoJo Jensen, Dirt Farmer Wisdom, 2002

There are 9 hours between 10 PM at night, and 7 AM in the morning. If you count those last miserable days of Mandy’s first pregnancy, when our air conditioner couldn’t physically get cold enough and no amount of pillows made her comfortable enough, it has been nearly four years since we slept those hours away uninterrupted, and there were many nights when one or more of us slept fewer than three of those hours.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

We’ve probably mentioned somewhere in here before, the nights of Noah’s first 15 months of life were hellish. I know everyone goes through it – those initial days of sleeplessness are what everyone trades war stories about – but until you’ve experienced sustained sleep deprivation, it’s hard to appreciate its effects.

There were nights that literally faded into days, and we couldn’t tell much difference. Fortunately, and God only knows how, he was the happiest of babies while he was awake, which recharged us - enough, at least -to make it through the following night.

At some point, a year and a half after he was born, Noah slept just enough for us to regret our decision to sell every baby thing we owned after a couple of months, and for Elliot to be conceived. Those last days before he was born, I was honestly dreading living through that again. We were pleasantly surprised to see how the other half lived. E slept for seven hours at a stretch a few days after bringing him home. Over time he woke up more, but everything’s relative, and relative to getting three hours’ sleep a night, five or six hours is like winning the lottery.

The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night's sleep. ~E. Joseph Cossman

Sleep deprivation is a wicked thing. At the very least, it causes you to lose hope that things will ever get better, and at its worst - well, let’s just say we never got to the true breaking point. In the midst of it we’ve flirted with depression, danced with anger and regret and said things we never meant.

Mandy has a higher breaking point than I do - not that its any less painful for her, but she complains less and pushes farther when it comes to her kids. Fortunately, she has a husband who feels bad if she’s up for too long, and feels obligated to participate in the misery rather than rolling over and going back to sleep (ha!). I’m willing to get up and help if I can. Unfortunately, what she doesn’t have is a husband who won’t bitch about it during or afterwards. Because it doesn’t do her much good to hear how miserable our lives are at that moment and experience it too, she tends to keep after it until long after I would have called for a break.

That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep. - Aldous Huxley

When your kids are up at night, and for several hours at times, it’s easy to lose sight of how fun this experience should be and to focus instead on how miserable you feel. It is times like this that I really appreciate my wife, and her ability to make me smile and refocus on the positive. Like picturing her sitting there, more likely wishing desperately for a nap but instead doing art projects with Noah, making this card.

Sweet

Pooped out after Charlie's pool party this past weekend. We just moved Elliot around and this is the first time both boys were asleep together. You know me and sleeping pics. Love em. Take them at every opportunity.

Tuckered out little E

Little E is still fighting his ear infection/fever. He was up several times overnight last night. But this morning he had a good nap, ate a good lunch and nursed well. I gave him some tylenol and he had only a mild fever and was in good spirits, so I felt fine about leaving him with our babysitter for a couple of hours to have a movie date with Noah this afternoon. I planned on being home before his normal afternoon nap time.

I got a picture/text message from our sitter on the way home with a picture of Elliot asleep in the bouncehouse with the following text: "Haha he was seriously bouncing and laughing minutes before but then he laid on his belly smiling while I was bouncing it and he's passed out! Should I keep him awake till you get home or just let him sleep?"

Of course, I told her to let the poor guy sleep. Obviously, he needed his rest.

His temp was going up this evening before bed and starting to affect his mood. I gave him some Motrin and he's had his 5th dose of antibiotics tonight. Hopefully, he'll rest better and be back to 100% tomorrow.

Sleepy Noah

He was hoping to just enjoy a nice read on the way home, but sleep just snuck up and bit him.

His favorite place in the whole, new world

In his Mom's arms...

This is one of the things I miss the most. With Noah, and his well-known sleep problems, I was up almost as much as Mandy was, rocking him, holding him and putting him to sleep. As much as I wanted a full, uninterrupted night of sleep during those days, there were many times when I just enjoyed holding him in my lap, listening to him breathe contentedly and watching the sweet innocence in the face that appears only when a baby goes to sleep. That look still transforms a 3-year old back to a newborn, and I still miss the days when I could zone out rocking him to sleep, and watching him slip off to dreamland.


With Elliot, I have not been able to rock him to sleep since he was several weeks old. For whatever reason (the reason is probably that all babies are different, and psycho), he likes to go to sleep sitting up unless you have a boob he can latch onto. I can walk him around, with him sitting up and laying his head on my shoulder, and he will go to sleep, but God forbid I decide to lay him sideways and rock him in a chair or try to rock him to sleep. He just gets mad. For that reason, Mandy has been saddled with going it alone at night with this one. As much as I am willing to help, it is just more practical for her to take care of it. Don't get me wrong - I love the sleep, and being able to roll over and go back to it when she has to get up several times a night, but there are many days when I'd love to hold him in my arms and watch him sleep. She's sacrificing, but she is also getting something I cannot have.


As everyone who has been down this road before is fond of reminding us, this will not last. Pretty soon, Elliot will be off on his own things, taking care of business, and we will not get to hold him like this. I believe it. Once we got Noah his "big boy bed", it was over. It is both a milestone and a bittersweet moment when that happens, and as much as I disliked having to rock him to sleep every night at the time, I miss it now.

It's cute, right?

Elliot all snug as a bug in a rug sleeping in the stroller (in his brother's size 4T hoodie that Paul put on him) and blankies. Precious, huh? You know what would be even cuter? Him sleeping....... in his CRIB! Yes, that little guy has been consistently waking up around 5:30 for the past month. So Paul will take him and I go back to bed for awhile. But, usually Paul is working out until 6am, so sometimes I'm up for awhile with him before going back to sleep. It wouldn't be so bad if he slept through the night, but those days are over too. On good nights he wakes once at 1-ish to nurse. On bad nights it's more. This all coincidentally started when he got his first 2 teeth. The 3rd is coming in now. That doesn't offer much comfort, since he won't have all his teeth until he's TWO! Ok, enough of my pity party.

He slept from 6:30-7:30am in his stroller today after Paul took him on a walk. At least he's really, really cute.

Sweet little swinging sleeper

Unlike his big brother, Elliot likes going to bed. Early. Sometimes, it can be a pain because although he's good at being on the go and sleeping wherever during the daytime, he does prefer his crib. And at night, he really prefers his crib. So doing family things at night can be hard. The good part is I can put him to sleep, leave him with the babysitter and be out of the house by 7:30pm for a date.

I usually try to rush him home on our evening walks before bedtime. If he starts to get sleepy I try to keep him awake or it kind of screws up his bedtime routine. But, tonight I decided not to be so rigid. He had a big day. Today was his first professional photoshoot. Not the kind he gets paid for. The kind we break the bank with. We have been holding out for his eyes to get fixed. He was a trooper. I expected a big afternoon nap afterwards, but for some reason, he didn't nap well. So I let him pass out while I was swinging him. I could tell he was about to because right before he falls asleep he hums loudly. It is so cute. I think sometime I'll try to get Paul to take a video of it to post so you can hear what I'm talking about. He hums and then very shortly thereafter he is O-U-T.

And this was him yesterday snoozing at the pool amidst much craziness.

Cutest little closed mouth grin and rosy cheeks after he woke up.

Drinking problem?

More like a hard day's play. He literally fell asleep while taking a drink.

Elliot has had his first (two) nights too!

Noah slept well in his big boy bed Saturday and I actually decided to put E in the crib Sunday morning early after he nursed at 5:30. Usually he wakes up at that time and I can either not get him back down or only for 30 min or so. He's a good sleeper, but an early riser. Well in the crib he slept till about 7am! YAY!

Sunday night was his first night. He went down great. Woke up early (about 10ish) but I think due to the loud thunderstorms. He normally sleeps till 3am. Then slept till 4:40. Very good! Went right back down and slept till I think around 6:30. Again, sleeping in later! Success! I had to change his diaper because he leaked through at 4:40. Went out and bought size 3's yesterday :( It was time to move on up.

Last night he did good too. Again woke up around 10-ish. But, our @#*($&#($*& monitor was beeping and I think that woke him up. He slept till 5:40am. After nursing a good 20 min, he was up for the day. So he didn't sleep in, but he did good.

He has also been napping well in there. I'm so happy! Now if only I can sleep. We have baby monitor issues, and when I can't hear him I worry a nd check on him too much. GRRR! Going to buy a new one STAT!

First Night

Tonight was Noah's first night in his new room, and in his new bed. And Elliot gets another in what will be a long string of hand-me-downs - Noah's old baby room. We could have transitioned him earlier, but it took us longer to get around to childproofing the room, removing the old bed and moving some toys in.

Ignore the decorating - we're not there yet:

It started off promising. Noah was excited to see his new room, and delighted to see his train table up there instead of the sunroom downstairs. Contrary to what we experienced with his old room at bedtime, it was pretty easy to get him up to this room for bedtime.

Wind-down time was marred for a little bit as Noah was playing in his bed and mashed his mouth on the non-childproofed headboard. No sound came out of his mouth for what seemed like at least a minute. The longer they go without breathing, the louder you know the scream will be and this one didn't disappoint, right as Mandy was putting E down to sleep. I couldn't tell where the blood was coming from at first, but eventually got him cleaned up and calmed down.

We played trains for a while longer, read a few books, and then it was time for bed. I let him stay up a little later than his usual 7:00-ish bedtime so he would be good and tired. On top of that, he had a good long day of play so I was hoping for a quick bedtime.

Me: "Noah, it's time to go to bed."
Noah (with a very earnest look): "I no go to bed Daddy, I no go to bed. Play trains."
Me: "Ok, five more minutes, and then we have to go to bed."
Me (five minutes later): "Ok Noah, let's go to bed."
Noah: "I no go to bed now. Two more minutes, daddy, two more minutes!" (holding up two fingers, and emphasizing each word by pointing them at me like a little dictator)."

I finally convinced him to actually get in the bed for bedtime. He had to bring a few things though - his sunglasses, his Thomas the Train book and his cup of water. I laid down next to him, hoping to keep him still (which is the only way he'll go to sleep - he fights it with every fiber in his body).

Then it started. "Daddy, I want a drink of water." "Daddy I want my book." "Daddy I want my gwasses." "Daddy where my book?" "Daddy where my water?" "Daddy read my book" "Daddy I need a drink." "Daddy where my gwasses?" In between each of these, I tried whispering, "it's time for bed, time to go night-night." Finally I just played dead for a while and put my hand on his back like I used to do to get him to go to sleep in his crib. "Daddy not put arm on me!!!!!" Ok, fine, I'll just play dead.

"Daddy, I want a drink of water. Daddy I want my book. Daddy I want my gwasses. Daddy where my book? Daddy where my water?..." "DaddypickupmybookgetmygwassesIneedadrinkDaddy" Finally I got up about 8:20 and went downstairs, hoping he'd fall asleep without anyone there, but knowing better. Sure enough, about 60 seconds later we heard the pitter patter of little feet running across the floor. He was treating his freedom from the crib similarly to the way freshmen treat it when they first get to college, away from parents for the first time. By going hog wild.

I turned him over to Mandy, who went back up to the room and found he had jumped on the couch and turned the light back on. She lay next to him, refusing to give into his demands (apparently like I did. It was effective - to the point he started asking for Daddy back) until he started sobbing for his Thomas book. She told him she'd give it back if he would go to sleep, and sure enough, he did. Hour and a half bedtime - we told each other it was the first night.

Success!

I heard Noah wake up around 2:30 AM and by the time I got to his room, he had climbed out of bed and was trying to open his bedroom door. This room is has more light in it than his old room did (which we kept pitch black at night), and I think he thought it was morning time because of the neighbor's light coming in through the window. When I walked in, he said "Play trains, Daddy." I told him it wasn't time to get up yet, and he needed to go back to bed. He started sobbing. "Play trains, Daddy! Play traaains!!" Finally he let me put him back in bed while I laid down beside him, but that apparently meant play time as he thrashed and talked and laughed for a while. I'd hear him begin snoring once in a while (through a now stuffed up nose from crying), but he kept waking back up and talking. Finally, I just left the bed and went downstairs and he eventually fell back asleep.

All in all it was a difficult first night, but not a total disaster. I suspect he'll adjust easier to staying asleep than he will to falling asleep. I'm a little sad that this likely spells the end of getting to hold him for very long. I didn't mind putting him to bed in his crib, because when he wouldn't go to sleep on his own, I would rock him to sleep, even at his age. It was a rare pleasure - Noah quiet, and cuddly. Time marches on inexorably, and those days may be over.

Postscript: Woke at 7:45, and immediately was excited to start playing trains.

8pm-4am

That's how long Elliot slept before waking to nurse! No wonder he's smaller than his brother! Then he was up for the day at 7:35. I can handle this. :) Of course, I was up with Noah twice before that with bad dreams. Something was "Scary!", but all I got out of him was something about pressing a button and asking to cuddle. I think it may just be a few years before someone doesn't need me and I actually get a full night of sleep. But, this is pretty good.