A Moment

Henry and i had a moment tonight as i was putting him to sleep. Sleep is a sore subject in our home lately. Our little golden boy who slept through nearly every night from age 3 months through 6 has been a our little night owl since then, which has been about 5 months now. We've made various excuses - illnesses, travel - but now we're determined to put an end to it.

We've decided that our problem was not letting him learn to fall asleep on his own. We've always rocked him, shushed him, sang to him, and generally put him to sleep. Now we're trying to put him down awake, so that he'll learn to self-soothe, self-relax, and self-fall asleep.

Bedtime tonight eventually looked like most nights of the past two weeks, with Henry standing up in his crib and wailing away. I put his favorite book in the crib, The Ugly Duckling, and started reading it to him. He calmed down enough so that he could hear me, and eventually he was ready to sit down, shut up, and listen. When we finished the book, he looked around and for once didn't mind being where he was. We played with some stuffed animals, during which i tricked him into lying down by orchestrating a wrestling match between him, the monkey, and the bear. And then he yawned. And he looked at me as if to say "OK, this isn't so bad, maybe i don't need to cry about being here. I'll give this sleep thing a try." He sighed, and within a few minutes drifted off to sleep.

If you are child-free, this probably means nothing to you, but if you've been there, you know what i'm talking about.