For the pre-show entertainment, we could walk down on the floor and get close to the clowns and the animals that were going to appear in the show. We were not close enough to pet the animals, although I'm sure mom would have jumped at the chance to give the elephant a hug.
Goofy joined us for the circus (he's still her favorite.) Usually when we get out of the car, she'll say, "Goofy, stay here." Before the circus, we asked if Goofy could stay, and she said, "Goofy go to the circus." The first few pictures below are from the pre-show:
Here's Lauren Clay with Grandmother's binoculars (most of the time she preferred to look through them the wrong way.)
Our little baby is not a little baby anymore. Doesn't she look big in this picture?
And to completely change the subject:
Tonight we began the journey of getting Lauren Clay on a consistent, early and healthy sleeping schedule. She's been in her own room now for a couple of weeks, but not without a lot of cajoling, cuddling and, at times, me spending most of the night in her room. I think if Supernanny were to visit our home, she'd be pretty happy with our positive communication, Lauren Clay's healthy eating, the activities we do, and the daily schedule that we-- more or less-- follow. But we'd fail miserably with bedtime. I could see that the bedtime "routine" was being met with more and more manipulation tactics each night, so we decided there's no time like the present to tackle bedtime. We also know that every time we give in and cuddle her to sleep, we only teach her that if she wails long enough and wears us thin enough, that she'll get her way eventually... which is an awful pattern to break. I'm promised by every sleep book I've ever read that persistence is critical and 3 days will break any bad cycles that have developed. I'm not very confident that we'll turn things around in three days, but we're not going to give up until we've persevered for at least 2 weeks.
Tonight I was oh-so-close to giving in. We started the bedtime routine at 6: Lauren Clay took a bath, spent a few minutes playing quietly with daddy, she brushed her teeth, put on PJs, and then I sat down to read with her at 7. I was planning to leave her room by 7:30 or so, but I was okay with 8:00, since that is closer to her normal bedtime. At 7:45, the pattern started: "I wanna turn off the light," "I wanna look outside," "I want daddy," "I want Henry," "I want Goofy, Mickey, Daisy..." 'I wanna get down and find daddy..." As soon as she started out of bed, the struggle began. That's actually been the pattern lately, although it usually plays out with tears and eventually ends up with me cuddling her to sleep when she's decided she's ready for "cuddle bug." Tonight, John and I worked as a team to a) keep putting her in bed when she hopped out every 15 seconds or so, and b) encourage each other to stick to our resolve no matter how much her pleading tugged at our hearts. Hopefully tomorrow night will be better. Actually, it can't be much worse: she finally gave up and fell asleep at 10:25 tonight. I'll give an update tomorrow night to see if we have improvement.
I kind of feel like when I get a caffeine headache (this is an especially interesting analogy, because it usually takes me 3 days to get past getting a headache if I am in the habit of drinking caffeinated drinks.) If I get that awful headache and realize it's because I've become dependent on caffeine, I usually decide that day to push through the headache and wean myself. I know that a cup of coffee or a Coke will take away the headache, but I push through the pain because I know that if I feed the habit, it'll only prolong getting over it.
For whatever reason, we decided that tonight was the night we'd clean up the bedtime routine, so we pushed through even when it was really really tough, with the hope that tomorrow will be easier and that by the day after tomorrow, we'll see the light at the end of the tunnel.
2 comments:
Boy are we on the same journey most days! We have gradually moved forward from sleeping with him all night after kaz to laying outside the bed on floor till he falls asleep. Some nights this goes rather fast and some nights it could be up to an hour. We are waiting for his official big boy bed to arrive and then we will start the night routine earlier and then books/kisses and then leave. We have tried this sometimes during the day at naptime because he occasionally gets mad and tells us to "leaf" and we happily do :) and on occasion he has fallen asleep on his own rather quickly. I will say the secret to some of our tiny success is to have a rather benign room. No toys, books, hurlable objects, etc. and we still have the kid proof door knob on. I plan on buying a video monitor so I can see him once we start leaving permanently. I just need to know that he is not swinging off the ceiling fan or climbing up the closet doors and then I think I can let him do what he needs to do to fall asleep on his own. We know he had to do this in the orphanage but he had lots of roommates so it has been an ordeal for us also. I wish you guys the best....can't wait to hear how things are progressing on Friday. I will pray for patience and resolve! ;) Karen
Shannon,
I agree, now is the time before Ty gets here to do your battles with Lauren Clay's bedtime routine. Best of luck -- don't have any advice on this area since we have actually regressed from good to bad sleeping habits. This time you can give me advice!
At our home, we are officially out of diapers and are not buying anymore. Libby has #1 down pat but still having difficulty with #2. She made it through the night last night without wetting the bed probably because we cut her off at 7:45 from anything else to drink. The night before she wet the bed around 1:30 then joined us in bed. Looking forward to hearing each other's war stories on Friday. What's our animal & fruit this week? kml
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