Boden is 12 weeks old now. I've been reading some parenting books...for the first 11 weeks I was reading fun, fiction books but due to the deep freeze, I haven't made it to the library, and after reading "Is Your Mama A Llama?" enough times that I'm now making up my own verses, I decided to delve into the parenting books for a change of pace. As I expected, they make me feel completely incompetent and ill-equipped for parenting a well-adjusted, "normal" little boy.
The first think I decided to obsess on was his sleeping...the book says he should be taking 2-3 naps a day--not happening. Boden takes a nap around 9 am, 10:30 am and then we do a delicate dance of I'm-still-tired-but-don't-really-want-to-sleep from about 1 until whenever he decides to shut his eyes for a couple hours. And then bedtime, ha! When exactly is that? Does that start if he "naps" at 7 or when he wakes up at 10, nurses and then falls asleep?
In any case, our focus has been getting him to sleep in his crib for all sleeping occasions. "The books" say that he should be at least slightly awake when you put him in the crib so he knows where he is falling asleep--so he doesn't wake up disoriented. One book equated it to if you, yourself, fell asleep on the sofa and your spouse carried you upstairs and you awoke in your bed--apparently, you'd be disoriented...I would be pleasantly surprised.
It's been going well, overall, though. Boden has fallen asleep on his own in his crib a few times, now--sometimes, he's a little crabbier than I'd like him to be and takes a little longer to fall asleep than I'm comfortable with but I set a time limit for his whimpers--if he were to exceed my limit, I plan to swoop in there, scoop him up and cuddle him, thus ruining everything, according to "the books" and setting us back years, I guess. He has yet to exceed my time limit, so I guess we're doing pretty good.
I've also introduced him to his "binky"--a very cute little monkey-faced blanket swatch who only greets him when he's in his crib..."the books" tell me he needs a comfort device of some sort and since that $%#@in' pacifier isn't coming through for us, we're moving on to some other material object. That's okay, this little monkey swatch is cuter than any pacifier and won't cause dental issues.
Last night was the BIG night--no more sleeping in the bassinet next to the bed! He fell asleep around 8 in his crib and didn't wake up until 3 am. At 2, I had a dream that he sent me a text message that said "mommy, I'm ready". I woke up and went to check on him but he was still sleeping. Silly, he doesn't have a cell phone, yet, so he couldn't be sending me a text. He nursed at 3 and was out again until 5:30. It was a glorious night and I feel like maybe he won't be sleeping with us when he's 5 years old. As I'm typing this, though, he's been laying in his crib for 20 minutes chatting to himself...when I put him down he was literally on the very verge of sleep. Hmmmm...we still have some work to do, I guess.
No comments:
Post a Comment