The Early Bird

Keith recently found an article that said that successful people tend to get up early. But what if your goal is to sleep in?


Last time I wrote I mentioned Owen was having trouble sleeping and was being a fairly terrible two. Since then we've made a few changes, with some positive results.


We initiated a "no tv and no computer week". Owen got into the habit of wanting to watch youtube videos on our computers (mainly Winnie the Pooh or Cars). We were worried that Owen was having nightmares (I thought I heard him wake up and say "The Owl scared me!"), and computer time after dinner was delaying bed time. We made an effort to hide our laptops (which normally make a regular appearance at our house). For the first part of the week Owen kept asking to watch something, but we reminded him, "it's no TV and no computer week!". Toward the end of the week he slowed down his asking, and hasn't asked for it much since.

We have implemented more discipline and scheduling into our day. We make it a point to warn Owen what's coming next: "We'll read this book, then it's time to wash our hands for dinner". Then we have to stick to the plan; inevitably he'll try for another book/toy, and if we give in he knows he can negotiate with us all of the time. We've started giving him time outs, which I'm not convinced of the effectiveness of yet. Sometimes he'll choose the time out over the preferred action ("If you don't wash your hands, you'll get a time out." "I want a time out."). But I think it has worked some of the time.


We started letting Owen choose (for the most part) who put him to bed. For about a week he chose only me, so that's what we did. I think the consistency of having me there each night helped (plus alleviated some jealousy of my time with Sophie). We had been staying with Owen in his bed until he feel asleep. In order to try and break him of that I started sitting on a "special" pillow on the floor next to the bed. The first night Owen kept getting out of bed and wanted to sit in my lap; I kept placing him back in bed. We did that SIXTY-FIVE TIMES (!) the first night. The second night was sixteen times; the third night was once. We are still a long way from being able to leave the room before he falls asleep, but it's a start. It's still a struggle to get him to bed as early as we'd like, but at least he's more consistently falling asleep before 9pm, than after.


He doesn't wake up in the middle of the night as often, but still consistently gets up at 5:30am or 6am (when he was in his crib he would sleep until 7am). We're trying the rule "we can't go downstairs until the clock says 7am", but so far that isn't having much of an effect on his actual sleeping. My newest theories are that he wakes up having to pee or wakes up cold. He has a favorite blankie, but it's fairly light and small. If he's awake he refuses to wear any other blanket. Not sure what we'll try next. We've thought about putting a gate on his door, but we're not really convinced that would do anything. I think this may just be a phase we have to live through.


His day time attitude still has some rough patches, but he definitely has shown some improvement. It's really quite bizarre sometimes - he just gets really upset all of a sudden for no good reason (at least not apparent to us). Last night we were coloring with markers, and anything I tried to draw made him cry as if we were taking away his favorite toy. Then he calmed down and we had no more trouble the rest of the night. But these upset times seem to be diminishing from the 3-4 times daily occurence they once were.


Sophie started a new medicine for reflux, which has shown some improvement in her overall demeanor and with her nippling, albeit spotty. She is more consistently nippling 50cc's, with an occasional 90. But also an occasional zero. We will be working with a feeding specialist in the next few weeks. Her gas seems to have gotten worse, so the next grocery trip will include soy milk and yogurt for me. A non-dairy diet helped alleviate the gas for Owen as a baby, so we'll see if that helps Sophie.


I started back to work this week, part time (about 20 hours/week). On days when we have doctor appointments it's difficult to get enough work done, but on days when we have nothing and I have help from the grandmas it's nice to do something more "normal". Although it's more difficult to catch up with sleep with naps.


Postscript: Owen was asleep by 8:30pm last night, and slept until 7am this morning (except for waking up at 1am). I call that success!