Petit work in progress

A new soft tree to round out a trio for my mother's birthday later this month. This is what I started last night instead of going to bed early.

Lily is, to understate the situation, not a good sleeper. And now that she's mastered trapeze arts and advanced tumbling, she has taken to catapulting out of her crib (actually a co-sleeper with the sides up), somersaulting across our bed, and landing in front of the bedroom door. She gives the door a few good pounds, then takes off running toward the bathroom (to bathe her hands and face in the toilet, no doubt). This is to ensure that we open the door and capture her quickly, after which she deems it crucial to stay awake for the next two to three hours while we perform a circus act to get her back to sleep.

We are wretched. Desperate. Frantic.

If you had to label us, we'd consider Attachment Parenters to be the closest description of our philosophy. But really, we're just trying to respect Lily's needs and phases, respond to her desire to be close to us, and not freak out when she's awakened for the fifth time in one night. We started sleeping in the living room (we have two rooms: a bedroom and a living room/kitchen) so that she would go back to sleep by herself when she woke in the night. She had been doing this well while we were still up (in other words, from her bedtime at 7 until 11 or midnight when we retired)... up until we began sleeping there. She quickly figured out that she was waking well into the night to find us STILL not in our bed, and started coming out to find us.

Last night before going to sleep I went to check on her, and found her sprawled on our queen-sized bed where she had fallen asleep mid-handspring, her feet on one of our pillows. I took a blanket from our pallet in the living room and covered her up. One blanket and a pillow short, we creaked down to the floor for the night, clear losers in the sleeping game.

Comments

[Carmen]

Oh, boy. I feel for you guys. We aren't doing too well in the sleep department either...our 9 month old has been a challenge lately. This phase won't last forever...that's my personal mantra right now. Be well.

[Monica Parker]

Just wanted to drop a line of empathy re: wakeful children. It's 4:02 am and my little darling has (i'm hoping, it's been quiet in his room) for maybe 10 minutes...maybe! He is 3 years old and has been working his way in and out of the most exhausting sleeping (or non-sleeping) schedule I can imagine. I end up toughing it out and just let him work his way around again, eventually he'll stay up long enough to go to bed (for the night for a change) and then he'll be a night sleeper until he's worked his way through that and back to being up again at night. It's not completely his fault though. Besides being a complete marshmallow and refusing to do the "let him cry" thing (why in the world would i do that to my little honey bunny?) I'm a night-owl to a large degree myself and since the only time i can get any work done is when he's sleeping, he's become accustomed to my being awake late when he has woken up as an infant and wanting to "hang with mom," i suppose is a part of why he is such a sunlight sleeper. Not that he is a 12 hour snoozer during the day either. Sometimes I don't know how either of us keep going. I definately don't know how much longer I can keep this up. I'm a single mom so i don't share the duties with anyone but my 15 year old son who i refuse to drag into the vampire cycle. But between you and me (and my baby), those quiet early morning (middle of the night) hours when we are wrapped tight in eachother's arms reading stories or listening to music or just laughing and playing are some of my most precious moments ever. Just like they were with my oldest (though he was a much better sleeper). Enjoy it all - it goes so fast. And you will look back on this and miss it very, very much. Well, maybe not the vomitting! No, scratch that, yes, even the vomitting! Good luck and hang in there. Once they are in school, they start sleeping like rocks at night - the stimulation during the day knocks em out! (I hope!)