Obligatory Sleep Check-In

Every so often, Jen and I revisit the sleep thing with Punk. She's pretty set in her ways and is VERY persistent, but hey, it's good to give it a go every once in a while since she is changing so much. So we decided last night to give her a chance to put herself to sleep in the crib.

She was super tired because she only had that little 40 minute nap, and she practically fell asleep on me in the rocking chair, so I kissed her and told her she was so sleepy and was going to go night-night in her bed. I told her that I would sit on the floor and would be there so she could fall asleep. I expected crying.

Instead, I got about an hour of playing, standing in the crib, walking all around, trying to pull her comforter off the wall, trying to poke at the laundry hamper, trying to poke me through the crib bars, you name it. If I left, she got upset for a minute and then found something to amuse herself for about 20 minutes and then would get upset again. So we decided to try to wait it out.

She was really upset for about 10 minutes and then it got quiet, and we were like, "Holy crap, it worked." HA HA HA. Wrong. She was quiet, then would whine for a minute, then get quiet, then would whine for a minute, and I thought she was putting herself to sleep. But I guess she was just doing something else, because eventually she started howling, and howling, and howling, and her voice got all quivery and she was having a hard time catching her breath and that was pretty much the deal breaker for us, so Jen went in and patted her and shushed her until she fell asleep.

She woke up 40 minutes later and was just sad and crying, "mama mama mama," so I went in and got her and she was asleep the second I put her on my shoulder. I took her into bed with both of us (usually we sleep on a futon in her room) and she slept snuggled up next to me until 5:45, had some milk, and slept until almost 8am. (Unheard of.)

I will admit that even though I got less sleep, it was nice sleeping in the bed all together. It was tough for me because when Punk would wake me up, I would have a harder time going to sleep because it was lighter in our room and because I would hear Jen sleeping, etc. But still, it was nice to be all snuggly like that and I think we'll try to make it a regular thing.

Originally I thought that sleeping in the futon would be better for Punk because it would reinforce that she should sleep in her room, but she seems to be really lonely at night (probably from being in day care all day during the week) and if she's going to sleep the whole night with someone in the futon, she might as well sleep with both of us in the bed. I had always imagined having a Family Bed but was worried about the logistics because it's really high off the ground... but since she loves to sleep touching another body, it's not so much an issue.

So we're doing a Sleep Switcheroo, but not at all the way we intended at the get-go. Once again, Punk proves that she knows best. :)

Also, sleeping from 10pm until 8am with only a couple of wake-ups was AWESOME.

Baby Name Meme

As seen on vishuddha_spin's journal:
The rules: name the 5 w's of your child(ren)'s names, then tag 5 of your friends to do the same! You can do one of your children or all of them.

Who named your child?: We both did. I'm pretty sure I initially suggested the first name, and Jen initially suggested the middle name. Scratch that - I know that's how it went down. And then I suggested using Jen's original last name as a second middle name.

What did you name him/her?: August Ruth [Last Names]

When did you come up with the name?: Somewhere in the middle of pregnancy, but I'm pretty sure it was after we lost the twin. We had been thinking of names for twins and then when we didn't have twins, it seemed somewhat odd to use any of the suggested twin names (even though they weren't "duo" names).

Where where you when you came up with the name?: I threw it out there one morning when we were laying in bed, some lazy Sunday or Saturday morning.

Why did you pick that name?: August is my paternal grandfather's middle name, an Anglicized version of Augusto. Ruth is Jen's paternal grandmother's name. Two admirable people.

I tag: sassywoman, viggie, hazeldragon, lelumama, and firecrotch.