Tired

This seemed like an appropriate name for this post, as it was originally going to focus around this picture:

but have coincided with me being generally tired (from constantly being on the go) and tired (of having issues with my computer). But, back to the picture.

Little Bear has never been what you would call a "easy" sleeper. When she was an infant, she had jaundice and slept all the time. We had to keep her awake during nursing by tickling her and rubbing her with a cold, wet washcloth and then wake her every two hours to eat. Once she got over that, she had trouble going down again on her own and we employed the "5 S's" to calm her down. Well that turned in to a reliance on white noise and rocking. Because of the constant nursing and waking, we decided to bed share, which we ended up loving. All except that 5-6 times per night that we were up with her. So, as the two working, tired parents that we were, we decided to move her to her own room. It's worked pretty well. She got herself down to 3 times per night for awhile, and now hovers around 1/2. So she's sleeping between about 7pm and 6:30 am with two interruptions. Pretty good, as far as the "experts" say.

But she still can't/won't go to sleep on her own, for the most part. Also, with five different caregivers, five days a week (Nana, Boppa, Uncle Eirik, Grandma/Grandpa, and day care) she has no schedule whatsoever. Case in point: sometimes she only takes a morning nap and is so tired she crashes at four when I get home only to be awake until 9:30. She doesn't have the skills to fall asleep on her own, but doesn't want to be rocked or patted, and we refuse to let her "cry it out." So that leaves us.... oh yeah, I'm not really sure where.

Our most recent (read: today) plan is to keep her to one nap a day, at noon. Then she'll be good and tired by then and go down without a fuss, and will be ready for bed at 7, which is when I think she needs to be there to get a good night's sleep. I don't know if this is going to work. I love cuddling with Little Bear but to go through 2 hours of bedtime every night when she's clearly either overtired or not tired enough is wearing on everyone. So this starts the two weeks of our plan. Stay tuned (though, please understand that I realize this is only interesting to me. And maybe Papa) and we'll see how it goes.

Oh yeah, the picture is from a car ride today. Well, after the car ride, obviously. She was so tired she fell asleep in the car seat and we couldn't wake her up. I hope we're doing the right thing...