Back in Black

We've really been struggling with Henry's sleep the past few weeks. I'm sure some of you have been there before, dancing/bouncing/holding a screaming baby in the hopes that he'd... just... go... to... sleep!

Fifty percent of what we read said "Put him in his crib, walk away, let him cry himself to sleep". The other fifty said "Hold him, rock him, be with him, coax him to sleep." One night, we let him scream for an entire hour before picking him up again. It was pretty miserable, and it didn't work for us.

Well, I'm happy to report that we've made major progress in establishing his sleep schedule. No longer do we spend a half-hour at a time trying to rock a sleeping baby to sleep every two hours. We keep him awake for much longer stretches, getting him tired and hungry, load him up with a bottle, and he falls asleep in our arms. Which is much easier than a half-hour struggle for every single nap (and certainly much nicer than listening to your son practically turn himself inside-out from screaming for an hour).

We have a pretty easy time putting him to bed at 8pm every night, and while he wakes up fairly intermittently, he's more or less sleeping through the night. Now, that doesn't mean we're not getting up 3-4 times a night, but he does go back to sleep pretty easily. We can definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel, the holy grail: bedtime at 8pm, see you again in the morning!

So, yeah, it's been lovely. Instead of being strung out all the time and wondering how in the hell humans raise children, we get to reflect on the cute/adorable/amazing/hilarious/fantastic things he does. I miss him even more when I go to work, can't wait to see him when I get home. He's a really fun kid.

Did I mention he's teething, too? Whew.