sleep {aka 'eep'}

Who would have thought that little babies don't just know how to sleep?  Strange, it is.  : )  Not really, but it's been interesting learning how to help our boys sleep.  When Graham was four months, he was ready for some sleep training, and he caught on to falling asleep unassisted in one try.  It was quick, easy, and painless.  He did really well for a while, with only a few set-backs here and there.  Most recently, though, Graham has made a game of getting out of his toddler bed.  At night, we'd put him down, and he'd get up.  Multiple times.  And this would go on for a few hours, sometimes until 10.  We tried all the tricks, but he thought he was so funny.  So we had to implement some bed time rules.  I'll let Graham tell you about them.

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We made him some little charts, and he really likes them.  We go over his rules every night and at nap time.  The other part of the trick to keep him in his bed isn't pictured...I put a child lock on the inside of his door, one of those little white plastic things that goes over the doorknob.  Now, don't worry, we don't leave him in there with it locked when we sleep, we just leave the door closed when he's napping during the day and while he falls asleep at night.  Safety first.  We're not cruel.  : )  I promise.  Just desperate for this boy to stay in his bed.

(I couldn't really get Graham to let me get a good picture of him...he had better things to do, like drinking his chocolate milk, or 'uice' as he calls it.)

Mason, by the time he was five months, was ready to sleep train as well.  He was done being rocked, done being swaddled, and needed some sleep.  Up to that point we'd been rocking him while swaddled, because that was the only thing that would work to get him to sleep when he was teeny and so fussy.  But we'd kept it up, sort of out of desperation, and because it worked.  Poor Mason, though, didn't catch on so quickly.  Or maybe he didn't want to. We had to work with him for a few weeks.  We'd put him down, try to help him relax, and eventually he'd go to sleep.  Once we had naptime tackled, we had to do something about bedtime.  At six months, he was still waking up every two to three hours.  Yikes.  Mostly because I'd just feed him to get him back to sleep, as we created a habit.  So we set up temporary residency for Mason in the third room, and off to sleep he went.  After only a few days of working through the night to get him to sleep, he's sleeping most of the night.  He'll still wake up once or twice, but we go check on him, change his bum and send him right back to bed, where he goes back to sleep.

Way to go, boys!  But victory belongs to Mom and Dad.  : )