Yep, I used an Aerosmith song as a title.
Holy Cow! Can't believe this is my first post of 2011! Sorry for the delay, y'all!
I try to keep this blog about Lily exclusively - at least for her first year. I'm debating whether or not I want to keep it "Lily Blooms" or expand it to include the whole family after she turns one - which, I might add, is less than two months away! Anyway, to keep with the Lily updates, here is something new we're trying: Bedtime Routine.
Up until now, I'd say we've had some amazing luck with our champion sleeper. She was in her own bed in her own room by 3.5 months. She has never slept in our bed at night (though Sunday afternoon naps are always condonable!), and she has never woken up more than twice throughout the night unless she was sick, and even then it never took more than a few back rubs or a quick waltz around the nursery to get her back to Slumberland...until recently.
Baby Girl is in love with the world and she doesn't want to miss a thing! Every night she seems to fight sleep more and more and she's starting to wake up more often in the wee hours - not chic. Because things are already getting difficult, we've taken the opportunity to break her of, what I feel is, our only bad bedtime habit: feeding her to sleep.
Around 8:30 every night, we take Lily to her room. We change her diaper and settle down in the rocking chair with a bottle. By the time the bottle is finished, Baby Girl is about three blinks shy of sleep, and we put her to bed. This used to work beautifully, but now that she's determined to sass Mr. Sandman, we're going to put these extra waking moments to good use. We've decided to feed her at a slightly earlier time (trying 8) and then putting her down with some cuddles and a story (or 2!) before bed. We're trying to read to her more often and this seems like the perfect opportunity. Tonight was the first night and y'all, she was having nothing of it.
See, when we read to Lily, she gets excited. She joins in the conversation; adding her own lines to the plot and dances to the sound of our voices - something about the rhythm of your voice changes when you read aloud - Lily responds to that. She also apparently doesn't think I read fast enough as she was desperate to turn the page immediately after I had turned the last. She loves looking at the pictures and I suppose she would rather enjoy the story through her own illustration interpretation than listen to what the author wrote. In the end, she was babbling away, rocking back and forth and waving the book around in the air over her head while I just sat there trying to dodge the book's corners and keep the girl from falling off of my lap. It was like she snorted literary Pixie Stix. Eventually she tired herself out and she's been unconscious ever since.
While this new technique did more riling up than calming down, we are determined to keep it going. We want to raise a reader and I'm encouraged by this overwhelmingly positive response to the written word (pretty pictures)! Wish us luck!
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