The Big Oh-Point-Five

Yep, today is Celeste's half-birthday, and now that she thinks she's all grown up, she thinks her bedtime should be adjusted and that she should have a few more freedoms — even if she hasn't found her feet yet.

Last night, she started the night waking up screaming pretty much right at the 45-minute mark. After the third of these wakeups, Evelin got her down for a few hours, but by 1:00 a.m. the fun was starting. Celeste wanted to be up. Evelin distracted her and soothed her back to sleep within a half-hour, but it really sounded/felt to me like it took about three hours.

CORRECTION: She woke to eat around 1:00 a.m. and went back to sleep with no problems. But then she started crying again around 3:00 a.m. I apparently woke to see the clock around 1:00 a.m. and again when the 3:00 a.m. crying started and thought it was one continuous cryfest. Evelin laughed at me. We now continue our regular blog, already in progress ...

Of course, when she woke again and started the same game around 3:00 a.m., it did last for about two hours — sooth and distract, leave her awake but quiet, listen to the various noises but try to go back to sooth and distract before she entered the full-on wailing stage, repeat ad infinitum.

Every time Evelin would move out of Celeste's range of vision, she would start whinging again. Finally, she brought her to our bed around 5:30 a.m. for about 15 minutes of cooing/playing with the blanket and our faces before she feel asleep. We didn't have a pacifier with us, but Celeste was trying to suck on my knuckles, so I tried to show her that she can suck her thumb. That got her to sleep for about 15 minutes, but then she needed a pacifier.

I don't know what's up with her, but Evelin's right we do need her to figure out how to sooth herself back to sleep and the co-sleeping is cool, but if she sees it as playtime instead of sleep time then it isn't really co-sleeping is it? This weekend Evelin wants to continue to try some sort of modified Ferber/CIO/NCSS sleep strategy. Naps are a problem, but not as big of one as the overnight sleeping/not sleeping, so we're focusing on that.

[ASIDE: And in case anyone wonders why it was Evelin dealing with Celeste all last night, lately I am no good at all in the evenings with her. When she wakes up crying she wants her mother and all I do is stretch out the pain for her ...]

Go Red Sox!

Way to go defending World Champion Red Sox, winning that first game of spring training. MLB television pretty much stunk over dial-up. The audio was okay, but since it was the NESN television feed, the commentators didn't do a good job of painting the scene for a listener. I watched/listened to about two innings between screamfests before going to bed.