Christmas Miracle

Lately we have been trying a new sleeping schedule for Carter, hoping to get him sleeping through the night. For the past 8 months he has slept through the night 3 times, while all other times waking up every 2 to 3 hours. Enough is enough! We began by reading a great book called Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth, (thanks to Val for letting me borrow it) and putting it's practices to work right away. Carter was put on a strict sleeping schedule as we discovered that he was so overly exhausted that he just couldn't sleep well. 

First we began comforting him whenever he woke up crying at night until he went back to sleep, but then the more I read in the book, the more Scott and I decided that we needed to stop going to him when he cries and just let him cry it out. It would be doing him a favor by letting him figure out how to put himself back to sleep on his own instead of relying on us. We had tried this before, but was never consistent and would end up arguing and going in sane lying in bed listening to him. So we thought that it would be a better idea to just get up and watch tv or a movie until he put himself back to sleep. Two nights ago he woke up at 3:20am (which was actually pretty good for him) and we drug ourselves into the living room and watched Conan O'Brien and the news for 40 minutes until he went to sleep. It was great as instead of getting angry and snapping at each other, we were laughing and actually having a good time. 

Last night, we were expecting the same thing, but lo and behold, it was a miracle. He went to bed at 7pm and didn't wake up until 5am! I did wake up around 3am expecting him to cry at any minute, but, silence. If he keeps this up, it will be a true Christmas miracle (besides the TRUE Christmas miracle of Jesus). Way to go Carter!

Now, some cute pictures of my son.

Cute pics Daddy took

One of my faves

Evan wrapped him in newspaper and he was thrilled

He likes to play with our shoes