Sleepy Time

In the past few weeks, Kason's night and naptime habits have gotten out of hand. For whatever reason (we can't seem to figure it out), he does not want to go to sleep in his room. Most nights, we give in and let him get up for a while, but we have decided it has to stop. So tonight, we went Supernanny style with him (well, sorta). Supernanny says, tell them goodnight and you love them, then leave. Everytime after the first that they get up, you simply take them back to bed without talking. That's where we differed. We can't stand to put our crying little boy to bed without acknowledging him. So, each time, I picked him up, hugged, shushed, and kissed him, laid him in bed, kissed him again and said, "night night, I love you". And, each time I left he was once again calm and said, "night night, I love you" back. After about 5-7 times and 30-45 minutes, he was finally down and asleep. Pretty painless and very little crying. Here's hoping we can keep it up and get him back to bed.

We are fairly certain he has nightmares since he sometimes wakes up shrieking and punching/kicking. The shrieks are so shrill sometimes it makes my heart race and stomach churn, but, we go check on him and he is back to sleeping peacefully. At some point, though, it seems every night, he actually wakes from these dreams/nightmares and makes his way to our room. As of right now, we have no intentions of stopping this. I, myself, had nightmares often as a child and ended up on the couch or in my parents' bed, so I know what it's like. So, each night, we take the blanket off the foot of our bed and make him a little pallet next to the bed. When he shows up in our room in the wee hours, we get his pillow and blanket and he goes to sleep on the floor. He is happy just being in our room, so it works for all of us.

As for Emily's sleeping, after about a week and a half of tortuous sleep, she seemed to get a little relief and is doing pretty well now. Our little Emmy has had horribly swollen gums for several weeks now, which we believe was the culprit of the poor sleeping. And, today, her first tooth has finally broken through. We expect to see #2 in the next few days, and are hoping for even more relief for our baby girl. Yay!!!

Sweet Dreams!!