Wednesday, November 12, 2008

and rock-a-bye, sweet baby micah...

wow. bedtime was hell tonight. it's nights like these that make my inner voice say, "i am doing something very, very wrong..." but i know i'm not, there are just rough nights and smooth nights.

micah fell asleep at 7:45 pm on the living room floor, watching the nightmare before christmas. "perfect," i said. i nursed rowan to sleep in bed, then went to get micah and put her in her bed. she woke up. and threw a fit. not just any fit, mind you, a kicking, screaming, bawling fit. amazingly, her brother slept through all the noise. micah was upset because she did not want to go to sleep. i held her and reassured her that it was time to go to sleep, that we needed to get a full night's rest because we have such a fun, busy day tomorrow. usually talking with her about our plans for the following day helps her to calm down... but not tonight. it just enraged her further. so i got in bed with her and tried to nurse her. she screamed more. i tried walking around with her - nope. it took about an hour, but i finally got her to go to sleep, lying down with her head on my chest and my arm pinned underneath her. i waited until i was sure she was sound asleep, then tried to shift her body off of mine and onto her bed (which, by the way, is a twin bed pushed up right against our queen bed). she woke up and started to cry again. i thought i might join her... but this time, she only protested for a few minutes, then drifted off to sleep. round three happened half an hour later while i was talking to josh on the phone, but again, only a minute or two of tears and she was back to sleep.

it's not always like this at bedtime. in fact, tonight was rare. usually, depending on whether or not she's had a nap, we get in bed somewhere between 8 pm and 11 pm (closer to 8 if she's skipped the nap, closer to 11 if she snoozed at all during the day). i put on a movie at a low volume, we nurse, rowan almost always dozes off first, and micah follows closely behind him. then i get up, take care of stuff around the house, read, or hang out with josh if he's still up. one or both of them will usually wake up an hour or so after falling asleep, so i go in there, help them back to sleep, and nine times out of ten i stay in there after that, either reading in bed with my little headlamp, or falling asleep myself.

micah has been telling me lately that she wants to sleep in her own bed, the one we have picked out for her from IKEA. we haven't bought it yet, she's just seen it and played in it at the store. she would like me to put it in the playroom, she says. i do want to buy it for her, because i know she'll have a blast playing in it and pretending to sleep in it. and who knows, maybe we'll move it into our bedroom and she can start out the night in it, at least. if she wants to.

josh will be home on monday - yeah!!! :)