Sleep Deprivation

I guess sleep is optional here at the Newman's house. A good night's sleep is something I haven't had for the longest time. These past few weeks has been especially hard. Most nights I am in and out of bed from 3:00 on... Why??? I wish I knew why. Emma has been waking up more during the night than usual. Lately, at about 1:00 or 2:00ish she wakes up and has a hard time getting herself back to sleep. I lay in bed listening to her moan, cry or chit chat with herself. This sometimes goes on for over an hour. Finally, she gets herself back to sleep and is up again around the 4:00 hour. That is when I feed her and she then goes back to sleep.

Sounds bad enough, right?

Well, Ethan decided that he wants to part of the mix too. For some reason, when Ethan wakes up, he thinks it is time to get up and comes to our room... wakes me up ... I look at the clock... 12:30... great! Pick him up and put him back to bed... at about 5:30-6:00... here he comes again... this time he can't go back to sleep so here we are up for the day.

Sound confusing, well it is... our solution??? I think there isn't much we can do about Emma right now that we aren't already doing, but for Ethan... we got him a clock. My goal is for him to eventually go back to sleep when he wakes up... so I told him when the first number says 7 he can come out....

Has it worked??? Kind of... he thinks if he sees any 7 at all it is time to wake up... so yes, 10 minutes later we see him again after we already marched him back to bed.

Another thing we've been trying with Ethan is not giving him a nap. Well, we try to give him a nap, but he chooses to play in his room instead. Which makes him one little tuckered out little guy come bedtime. Sometimes this is what happens if we go out in the evening...

Yep, he falls asleep on the way home and crashes on the couch! So now we are trying an every other day nap for him. So far it has worked out pretty good. The best part is, I don't see him at 12:30 at night... and usually he doesn't come into our room until 6:30ish the next morning.

So, I'm still sleep deprived, but at least part of the problem is just about fixed!