my baby sleeps thru the nite–longest rambling post ever

The sun shone a little brighter today, folks.
the birds sang sweeter.
there was a little less figurative corn on the floor and the tuna melt, well, melted just right.
why you may ask?
my son sleeps thru the nite.
that’s right.
i’ll say it.
i’m a cocky bastard.
HE SLEEPS THROUGH THE NIGHT!

not, “he slept thru the night last night,” or “he went down well tonite.”
nope.
he sleeps thru the nite.
here we are on night 4 and i put him DOWN AWAKE AND HE DID NOT CRY!
is is simply LEGEN ….wait for it…. DARY!

oh sure, there may be bumps in the road. i’m certain of that. probably tonite due to this pompous display. but i am quite thrilled and feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders that has been there for eleven months.
words cannot describe…….ok lemme try……….elated, jubilant, atingle, stoked, psyched, fired up, triumphant, exultant……….see that?? my words are coming back.

gone are the days where my vocabulary has consisted of:
“did you do peeps?”
“mommy is too tired”
“don’t eat that off the floor”
“yes we can watch the backyardigans”
“no you cannot eat a marshmallow at 7:30 am”

i mean, just today h. and i were discussing how freud would psychoanalyze holden caufield and whether the absence of a father figure contributed to his downfall.
well, maybe not yet, but soon!

if you don’t have a child who “doesn’t sleep,” you cannot understand the elation. you may want to check out where i discussed this before.

and i didn’t talk too much about it because i didn’t want the unsolicited advice. and you probably don’t really understand. i’d meet people who would be like, “i empathize. my son was sick last week and he got up twice three nites in a row.”
“why don’t you have this nice glass of shut the hell up.”
now i’m not the only one with kids who didn’t sleep and i don’t think i have it harder than anyone else. PLEASE don’t misunderstand. but unless you’ve gone eleven months with no sleep (and please don’t forget that H. hasn’t napped since she was about age 1), please don’t pretend to get it.

but let me try to paint a picture:
when j would go to sleep, whether for his nap or at nite, he would get to the end of the first sleep cycle and usually wake up. if you know anything about baby sleep cycles, that is 20 minutes. now granted, in the last few months, it got better, and when i would put him down at about 6, he may stay in his crib for two hours or so, but then we would get up. mitt and i would rock him, sing, sling……..whatever and he may or may not go back down. and then i would go to bed with him……or mitt would sling him until i got home.
Not normal.
however, this was progress from months before when he would ONLY sleep on someone. so each day for his naps, h. would watch something on the tv, and i would sleep in the chair with j. on me.
also not normal.
and before he could roll, we would just put him down around 6 in our bed.
but what that all means is that i would try to do something when he would go to bed at nite………like pay bills, or write email, or talk on the phone, or paint my toenails, or clean the bathroom…….or write my novel…..you know, all the stuff us sahm’s do……only to be interrupted soon after. very soon after……….and disgusted and frustrated that nothing got done…..AGAIN!

i don’t know how it all happend. because check this birthday present out.
so he was in his crib at some point.
but in the beginning, i really felt that h. got all my attention and he got none. i think that’s how it started b/c i SWORE i would never bring a child in the bed again. and swore before i had kids i would never bring a baby in the bed. what kind of moron would do that? (this one!)

so i know this has been boring and thank you for coming this far. i just want to remember it all b/c i feel that things that happen with h. are already starting to dim memory-wise and i want to have it all.

a quick shout out to sheila for recommending the book which made me go ahead and do it–healthy sleep habits/happy child by dr weissbluth. really could also be retitled boring, but got the job done.
i had to finally read her suggested book b/c her kids sleep like it’s a competition complete with an engraved medal, a glistening trophy and an icy jug of gatorade dumped on coach sheila’s head at the end.

and also to karen who consistently told me to do without being at all annoying, explained the necessary reasons and listened to me BAWL saturday nite when it was all over and reassured me that i was not the worst mother in the world.

thanx to all the kind words you have all emailed me.
now, i begin my new life.
what should i do first???????????????????????
learn the thriller dance?

so good nite.
sleep well
and by the way, not only did he sleep thru the nite completely last nite, but he went down awake tonite with NO,
that’s right,
ZERO crying.
you know you are feenin’!

the way i look at it, and look at most things, is i can do it for awhile.
when i ran the marathon in a different life, i was hurting very early on. mile 4 maybe? but i kept thinking, “it will end. it will not go on forever.”
and four days later, i finished and went home with my medal–same as all the people who finished while it was light out.
when i was birthing j, it hurt.
no more than anyone else–but yes, it hurt. but i kept thinking, “it will hurt for awhile and then at the end, i get to take home a beautiful baby boy.”
(i “knew” it was a boy, even though i didn’t really know via sonogram, but had painted the room blue and picked only a boy’s name.)
with h., labor was longer, so for a time, i thought that i would be the first woman ever to not be able to get the baby out and that made me cry, but she made it out (in case you didn’t know how the story ended.)
even when i used to work outside the home, a particulary bad day was suddenly not as bad when i remembered, this is finite; it won’t be forever.
so here i am, doing what i swore i would never do–letting my beautiful baby cry it out.
it had to be done.
i’ve been thinking about if for some time b/c he wasn’t sleeping well with me and i would awaken each morning to grap his heel as he tried to do a dive into the hardwood floor.
i guess i should’ve done it months ago. he’s doing great. he cried for 35 minutes the first nite, 8 last nite, and 6 tonite. the first nite he got up twice –at midnite and 2 for 20 minutes and five (mitt went into him)
and last nite he got up once at midnite.(mitt went in once and then i said just give him 10 minutes and by then he was back to sleep.)
oh.
and btw, it was spur of the moment decision to do it–kind of.
the evening before it took FOUR hours to get him to sleep so i was thinking about how to just get up the nerve to do it.
so i put him to bed at 6 regular style and when he woke up at 7:30 ish–like usual–i went in and sat next to him in the rocking chair and tlaked to him and kept putting him down and he kept standing up………did that for about 20 ish minutes? 25?
then i finally had enuf and left.
(went to sunflower room to cry)
and then–within 10 minutes, it stopped.

somehow that was worse.
when the screams slowed down and then stopped.
when the whimpers could still be heard with my ear pressed to the door and i knew he had found sleep,
but sadly.
knowing that he had given up on me who he is so attached to most.
who he loves the best and has depended on for eleven months for his every need.
some eleven month birthday present!
he finally gave into sleep b/c his heart was broken.

dancing baby–non scary style

he loves to dance!

j. is up to about 15 steps, but that only happened once. he is doing more like 4 or 5 at a clip. this was the best footage i could get. and this was tough–h. was interested in getting shots of the ceiling and rug.

we’re all sick over here. getting better, but sick in june? come ON! enough already.

[

Dude’s Day

As Mitt and H. eat the lovingly prepared breakfast in bed and j. naps, i have a few moments to blog.
what can i say about pete?

he has created enormous shoes for Mitt to fill. that’s for certain. Luckily, Mitt is the greatest father ever. he would do anything for his babies and is so happy to do it. aside from pc, i have met no one who does the job better and is so hands on.

besides pete.

one of my first memories is from kindergarten. the two of us walked home from school after a play i performed in……..or graduation……….some event that made me walk home from school with a balloon. i was nervous the whole way home that the helium filled guy would fly out of my hands and had it wrapped around my wrist so it would not. we made it all the way home and then……..i lost it. i remember my dad jumping to reach it, but it was too late b.c i hadn’t said anything. and he was so sad for me–i could see it on his face b/c he knew how kids love balloons. he would have grown wings and flown up to get it if he could, but alas he could not.

other memories i have are school related. whenever i had a test, we would go in his room and close the door and he would quiz me on the material. i guess brother tim was running around like a maniac and this was how we could get privacy to study. i was always amazed by when he would say, “now this is going to be on the test.” how the hell did he know? but he did. and i would be shocked, but relieved as those questions would appear the next day on the test.
now this practice went on for a long time………..definitely thru middle school? and i’m gonna say some of high school too. and we still make fun of him b/c when i would come home from breaks on college he would ask, “do you have any homework?” i don’t know why we all thought it hilarious–maybe the word choice?

then there was sports. we certainly had our ups and downs with soccer and basketball and his words of wisdom he tried to impart regularly. being as ass-type kid, i thought he knew nothing. playing soccer now as a grown up, i’m able to put into action all the things he tried to tell me. he would tell me as goalie to walk all the way up to the goal line before punting it (“i don’ t want anyone looking at me”). he told me to learn to dribble b/c i wasn’t going to grow anymore and i would be playing guard later on. (“how does he know i’m not gonna grow!”) and too many other things to list, the most important of which was to have fun.
i had some fun playing high school sports, but i was always too nervous. again, i see that now as an adult playing sports. it’s all for fun. i was too worried about making a mistake or having people look at me for too long to listen to his advice and just have a little fun. i hope we are able to teach that to h and j . maybe pete can try again.

and lastly was teaching.
anyone who knows me knows how i love to teach and how i wanted to do it since i had mr koplowitz as a teacher in 7th grade. it wasn’t something i fell into or something that would give me summers off–it was my passion.
well, when i started, i was the worst teacher EVER!.
ever.

i would stay every day after school for about 3 hours. then cry on the way home for the 40 minutes it took. then talk to my dad and cry. then go to staples. then do more work and go to bed around 9. the next day i would pray for a car accident so i didn’t have to go. not death–just a nice broken leg to lay me up for awhile.

pete was on jury duty.
if he wasn’t, i am doubtful that i would be a teacher today. he talked me down each day. he listened to my complaints and offered advice when necessary. and probably most importantly, he gave me permission to fail. he said, “do it for awhile (six months? a year?) and if you can’t do it, you’ll do something else. you stay here with us as long as you need……we’ll help you.”
and that advice comes back to me too. you can always change your mind–try something new…..you have your family to fall back on.

i could go on and one.
really i could.
but i shoudl go check on the other father around here.

i love you, pete.
you are the absolute best father ever.
talk to you later.
happy dude’s day.

ee pulls

wow.
speen awhile.
free time has been spent reading books on getting babies to sleep, trying to get a job, and playing soccer. we haven’t won a game yet, but we’re having a blast trying. and i got a job! yay! details to follow.
j. not sleeping great. but improvement is there………slow and steady wins the race.
j. is not walking yet, but having fun trying. and h. is, well, h.