Before I give tonight's bedtime report, I need to say that this third night was not perfect, but it was better than last night, and totally different than two nights ago. At least it keeps me optimistic that we're on our way to calm evenings at a decent hour... sooner rather than later.
Long story short (no need to give lots of details tonight): Lauren Clay fell asleep at 9:15, and we put her in bed for the first time at 8:15. I did have to return her to her bed over 20 times, but she barely cried at all throughout that hour. We had a few whimpers and a couple of times she let out a wail, but nothing major and nothing lasting longer than a minute or so. That in itself is progress. To those of you who are battling bedtime, take heart. Persistence and consistency do pay off quickly.
I'm getting lots of spiritual lessons in this bedtime process, although they're all sort of swimming in my mind and this is the first I'm attempting to articulate them. One thing that's been on my heart the past few days is how my prayers and my actions have been incongruent for a while in relation to sleeping patterns. I have often prayed for wisdom in helping Lauren Clay to sleep (and in helping us to have sane evenings), but I have not had the discipline to do what I knew needed to be done. It's like I was praying, "God, please help her sleep in spite of me and our sporadic evening schedule." Kind of like a person who says, "God, get me out of debt... even though I'm going to continue to dish out money for a car I can't afford and I'm going to continue to run up my credit card bill because a budget is too restricting." Or a person who says, "God, please make me lose weight... but I'm going to eat whatever I want, whenever I want and exercise only when it's convenient." At some point, we have to take responsibility and be disciplined. The process isn't always comfortable, but the payoff is oftentimes the answer to our prayers.
Ugh... there's a loud storm outside right now. Hopefully this won't wake our sleeping child. The latest clap of thunder caused ME to jump. So far she's remained asleep...
Uncle John and Suzi are in town now, and Lauren Clay is thrilled that they are here. She took to them as if no time had passed since the last time we saw them. We look forward to a fun day tomorrow (hopefully with pictures to post!)
1 comment:
wowzers - i'm so glad that last night was even better. i'll be sure to let jason know :-). i applaud your efforts to do this and i admire your steadfastness. like i said, we were the SAME was about the passy. after it was all said and done, we looked back and said, why didn't we do this sooner??? hats off to you and john for sticking with it!
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