The 12 Hour Intruder

Since returning from our trip last week, there has been one major, unexpected change to our daily routine. Shelby and I resolved that we would try to wean Eli from his erratic, short-burst sleeping patterns at night. We weren't quite sure how we would do this - we have read several books that offer conflicting and often simple advice (cloaked with a huge amount of filler necessary to make an entire salable book out of concepts like 'it is OK for your baby to cry himself to sleep). To begin, we established a few groundrules: (1) I would try to sooth Eli when he wakes before midnight, (2) Shelby would feed him at least once during the night, and (3) we consider one or more blocks of longer than 5 hours a success. But a funny thing happened on our way to implementing this plan. The first night, I soothed Eli when he woke around 11 and then let him cry himself to sleep. He was not happy about it, but he lived. He woke once or twice more that night, but it seemed like crying himself to sleep once taught him that this was a reasonable alternative to mom. The next night, he slept seven hours. We've been getting consistent blocks of 6-8 hours for the rest of the week, including one ten hour block a few days ago. Granted, he isn't sleeping the entire time - we know that he is waking up a soothing himself back to sleep. And we also need to start the process of going to bed at 6:30 in order to give him his 12 hours of total slumber. But...this has allowed us to reclaim our evenings after he goes to sleep. Shelby even got to work on a puzzle last night!

In other news, we've been scanning our old pictures for posterity. Amazing to see some of our old pictures (and how digital photography has improved over the years!). This took up a major chunk of the weekend, but we feel more comfortable knowing that many of our pictures will be archived.

And Eli is now signed up for another year of day care. We briefly entertained the idea of applying for a switch to full time care (that would give us more flexibility on Tuesdays and Thursdays), but decided that the temptation to work on those days would be too great. So we have another year of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday care.

Such are the mundane trivia that we now perceive as major events. Funny how Eli has that effect on us!