"crying it out"

Steve left for a winter weapons training exercise on Tuesday (Feb 22) and so I had to dust off my "single" parenting shoes once again. I thout it would be easy- in truth, I thought it would be a breeze! I take care of my lil Moose all day and well into the night pretty much by myself. I guess just having Steve's presence here in the house makes Jackson a better (but not great) sleeper. That night and wednesday night, lil man woke up with a terrible high pitched scream so I literally RAN into his room, feeling like I was going to bust the door down, only to find out that he wanted to cuddle with his mommy. whew. thank god it wasn't anything serious. BUT he wanted to cuddle for about 4 hours each night and wouldn't let me put him down- we ended up watching endless Family Guy episodes (and thank the good Lord that Jackson doesn't understand what the show's are about) until FINALLY at 4am Disney Junior switched back on and we could watch more appropriate cartoons for another 90 minutes before he fell back asleep. Needless to say, Wednesday was ridiculous. we didn't leave the house! I was going to lose my mind with how tired I was, but the whole "Crying it out" method of sleep training seemed cruel and heartless to me and I could never go through all the way with it. Well, after a couple of days of being a living zombie, I decided to give it a try once again and Thursday night would be Night 1. I expected it to be rough (having attempted it several times, but always ending in me breaking down and running in) so we played outside, played inside, ran errands and pretty much kept him as busy as I could. Around 7, we started getting ready for bed: a nice bubble bath, bed time lotion, quiet playtime in his room, a book and (yes I know it's bad now) a bed time bottle. He went down beautifully! Around 10, he woke up and cried for 10 minutes and went back down. 11- same thing only it lasted for 20 minutes, then he fell back asleep, but woke up 5 minutes later and cried for an hour. I decided I had to go in and at least check on him. I went in with a nice warm bottle (Similac has a TODDLER formula that I mix with whole milk bc lil man's tummy is sensitive to milk still--- it works wonders!--- thanks Hana!) and I found, to my horror, that his diaper was completely soaked through! I felt like a terrible mom! I HEARD him crying and I THOUGHT it was nothing! OMG how am I going to do this!?!? I changed his diaper, fed him and put him back down (1/2 asleep already). He woke up around 7:30 and was happier than he had been all week! SUCCESS!!

Friday, we spent seriously ALL DAY running around. We played outside in the morning before his nap, then after it, went to have lunch with a bunch of my girl friends (and Dannika- Jackson's friend who is a total Diva and I LOVE IT!!!) and then went shopping. When we got home, we played outside and then went on a walk with my neighbor, Michelle, and her 2 year old son, Cole. Jackson loves Cole so it was great! He ran out some of his energy at the park and then we went home, made dinner and went to bed. He went down without a fuss again! YES! I decided that Night 2 would be just as bad as night 1 so I prepared myself: I did some design work for one of my clients and had 1/2 a bottle of wine. He did cry again... a lot! But it was in short bursts and luckily, my friend, Victoria, was texting me too and so I did not go in to his room. He finally settled back down around midnight and woke up at 5am. I was a little surprised to see the time, but went in all the same and gave him a bottle. He fell right back asleep and slept til 8:15. I listened outside his room and heard him laughing and playing in his crib. It was so precious!

Today, we have a lot of things to do as well as a GIRLS (and Jackson) night at my friend, Kari,'s house. I'm excited to see how he does bc we will all be spending the night! Wish us luck!

OH, and I'll be posting some pictures of my lastest arts & crafts up tomorrow... as soon as Hana shows me how to do it lol.