May 16, 2008

Last night was a mess. After half of a movie, we had to take Timmy out because he was getting tired. He'd fall asleep on my shoulder until a loud noise from the movie woke him up. He'd scream his head off, then fall asleep again, only to repeat every 30 to 45 seconds. Eventually we decided just to leave. We gave him the pacifier during the movie for obvious reasons, but it didn't help much. On the way home, Timmy was snoozing away in his car seat (still with the pacifier). We got home and I left Tim to sleep in the carseat while I unloaded the groceries from the car. By the time I was done, he was awake, so I carried him upstairs, changed him, fed him and set him in his crib.
I got downstairs and looked in the carseat and realized I had put him down without the pacifier. Despite all the work from the past week, I was going to let him have it last night because I thought it'd be pretty mean to have him screaming for a half hour after he had already been sleeping for a half hour. As it turns out, he didn't utter a peep. He just went quietly to sleep.
Around 1:30, he woke up and I plugged the pacifier in.
The trouble came around 3:30. Timmy started crying, so I went in to replace the pacifier. Unfortunately, it was still in. This usually means he's hungry, so I went downstairs to make a bottle. I fed Tim the bottle and changed him diaper, thinking this would earn me a couple more hours' sleep. As it turns out, Timmy had no intention of sleeping then, or anytime within a 30-minute time radius. The long and short of it is, Timmy screamed, with a pacifier, until 4am, at which time he finally gave up and we both got some sleep.
Today, Timmy didn't get his first nap until 9:00. This is because he and I went on post to eat breakfast with Mommy. As I'm typing this, it's been exactly 18 minutes since I put Timmy in the crib and he's still letting me hear it. I'll go check on him in another 2.
10:06 a.m.: For cryin' out loud! (Literally). After 30 minutes of screaming, Timmy finally got to sleep... for 30 minutes. At 10:00 on the nose (I know this, because the cuckoo clock's 10 "cuckoos" went off, possibly the culprit in this case) Timmy was awake. This has the early warning signs of a very long day.

6:38 p.m.: Timmy's bedtime. I changed the routine a bit tonight. I gave him about 30 minutes after his bottle before putting him down- hopefully that'll help keep him from crying all evening. It's been about 3 minutes and he's still going strong.

Today was Timmy's first time taking a bath in the big bathtub. Usually we use the smaller plastic bathtub inside the big one, but I thought it was time to see how he'd do. He did very well, actually. I think it went better than normal- the water in the big tub doesn't come as far up on him as in the small tub, so when I took him out, he wasn't nearly as cold.
8:33 p.m.: Pacifier free is starting to pay off! Timmy cried for about 15 minutes tonight, but then got to sleep. Daddy goofed, though- After a few minutes of silence, I went upstairs to check on Timmy, but ended up waking him up instead. I came back downstairs, and within a couple minutes, he was sleeping again.