Sleep. Glorious Sleep.

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This clock is our new best friend.

When James finally started sleeping through the night, like a sick joke, Reese started waking at 5 AM.  We tried making her room darker, which didn’t help, we tried forcing her to go back to her room to sleep, which resulted in her throwing loud fits directly in front of James’s door, and we tried getting her to get into bed with us, just for a “few more minutes”, which resulted in more fits.

I had heard about alarm clocks for kids that let parents set the time they want their kid to wake up, and at that time the clock lights up, letting the kid know it is ok to get up. I didn’t think this would work for us, since Reese never listens to us when we ask her to stay in her room, so why would she listen to a clock? But, my nephew has one and my sister-in-law said it worked. We thought we’d try it, and I talked up the idea of Reese having her “very own alarm clock!”

I bought this one from Amazon. The Kid’Sleep Classic. It was $37, which was more than I was planning on spending but I knew the key to making it work was for her to be excited about it; the less expensive versions I showed her online from Target and Walmart did not excite her in the least. But, a cow dancing ballet in a pink tutu is really all a girl could ask for.

The clock is also a night-light, so when she goes to bed the clock has a glowing picture of a cow tucked into bed. Come 7 AM (which is the time we set it to, because for us, that’s sleeping in) the ballet dancing cow lights up.

And right now, its working. I know that she waits in her bed for the ballet dancing cow to light up, because most mornings, I can hear her feet hit the ground at exactly 7:00.

We’ve had it for a couple of months and she still usually stays in bed until it lights up.  I know that it is still semi-new so maybe in a few more weeks the excitement will wear off and we’ll be back to rising with the sun. But right now we are happy with it and I would recommend it to anyone who likes their sleep.

Sleep Is For The Birds

Rollin on about 4.5 hours of sleep today and it’s not going great.

Our girl is going through some major changes and she has no love for her crib or for sleep in general.

Last night she went down at 7 and was up at 11:50 PM. She screamed in her crib for about ten minutes (my version of the Cry It Out method; right now 10 minutes is my max but that could all change very soon.) When I went in to her room and saw her standing up holding onto the rail of her crib, jumping up and down and screaming, her face beet-red and tear stained, I couldn’t stand it and I had to pick her up.

The instant I picked her up she started smiling and pointing at things around her room. She was ready to play and she would be damned if I tried to rock her back to sleep. The attempted rocking caused more screams. All she wanted to do was crawl around, get her toys, and pretend like it wasn’t midnight and she wasn’t a ten month old baby.

I gave in and read her a few books. Is this right? Should I be playing with her or is this going to make her even more confused and teach her that nighttime=playtime. Who needs to sleep? Not a baby that’s for sure. And definitely not a Ma that needs to be up for work at 6 AM.

All I know is that I wanted her to stop crying. So we read No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed 5 times. Most of the times were with my eyes closed but she didn’t seem to mind. We played with some teething rings, looked at a few other books, and I let her climb all over me as I sat slumped in the rocker. After about a half an hour I decided to try and nurse her to sleep. Another “no-no” I know, I know. She became groggy and I put her back in her crib about 1 AM. For some ridiculous reason I could not get myself down (ha) until 2ish. Ugh. 

She awoke again at 4 AM, furious that she had been tricked back into her crib.

A little after 4 I brought her into our bed where she thrashed around for a bit and, after nursing again, drifted off to sleep until 6.

She has GOT to be exhausted today. Can a baby really outdo an adult in a game of who can stay awake the longest?  Seeing that the routine I have just described has been going on for about a month now, the answer is yes. The baby always wins.