Sleeping in

I'm really, no REALLY, thankful that Eli's been sleeping in these days. Three days in a row at 7:30+. Can't remember if I blogged that on Monday morning, we let him cry for half an hour because he first woke up at 6AM and this is after a non-overtired day and a rare 7 oz. bottle at night. I felt like he had no excuse to be getting up early and if there was ever a time I could let him cry without "guilt" or wondering whether he really needs something, Monday was the morning.

We actually never let Tobey cry for that long but that's because he never went that long. When he was 10 weeks old, he cried for the Dr. Moore prescribed 10 minutes and soothed himself to sleep and that's when we knew he could sleep through the night. He never looked back and neither did we. He did have a spell of waking up earlier around daylight savings, but it was never quite as early at Eli's 5AM wakings. And Tobey's sleeping habits never got spoiled by instant pickup like Eli's did when Tom's parents were visiting last month.

So I really felt like we needed to "break" Eli of the bad habit and get him sleeping in again. The crying started out as yelping and kind of escalated. But the thing that kept me going was 1) the stubborness to "win", 2) the awful, awful feeling of waking up cranky and cursing the darkness of waking up before sunrise, and 3) because his crying was not continuous. He would have gaps in his crying which signaled to me that he wasn't in terrible distress. He could still control his crying. So if it was a matter of being picked up, well, sorry buddy, I'll pick you up at a more sane hour.

And so it was. He fell back asleep after half an hour (by some miracle, Tobey slept through it all!) and stayed sleeping from 6:30 until 7:30 (he's also been waking up peacefully, not screaming, which I read is a sign of well-restedness). And because Eli's not waking up early, Tobey isn't either. And the rest is history. A three day history. And of course now we drive down to L.A. to be crammed into a single hotel room and he might just fall back into bad sleeping habits again.

But thank you Lord for answering our prayers for Eli to sleep in. I wasn't sure it could be done. But you've been gracious to make it happen!