Crib progress

Yesterday Silas slept for one hour in his crib. We had our nighttime routine (I'm not even going to pretend that I'm a that put together - my "routine" is that he gets a change into a clean diaper and nighttime clothes before I feed him for the night. Some nights we read Fox in Socks) and then I put him down in his crib around 9:50pm.

During the next ten minutes, I frantically downloaded a white noise app on my phone, after five minutes of providing shushing sounds on my own started to find me feeling lightheaded. Silas, like any baby, has this period right before he falls asleep where any little extra noise will jolt him back to awake. The first white noise app I found had seagulls flying on the beach. I started playing it. The dogs, previously curled up together and sleeping started growling at the non existent seagulls. Silas woke back up.

I quickly downloaded another (free) app and played a combination music box/ocean sounds combo as I patted Silas on the back. His eyes would slowly close until there was just the faintest sliver of eye visible, but I knew that wasn't good enough. He wasn't truly asleep until they were closed. After about five more minutes of gentle back patting, I sat back on the bed and waited to see what would happen.

My roommates came home.

I heard the door open and I knew that this was one of those moments - either the dogs would freak out and bark and all my work would be undone or nothing would happen and Silas would continue to sleep.

Thankfully the dogs did nothing except to continue to sleep, as I found myself tensing up every time I heard a noise outside our room. I kept glancing at Silas. He seemed to be staying asleep. I should mention, on Christmas Eve, he fell asleep and slept through a loud home theatre viewing of Batman (we were in the other room but it was still certainly above general household noise). He can sleep through anything if I'm not trying to also get some sleep.

When I checked the time, it was only about 10:10. All of this effort and worry and whatnot, and it had only been about twenty minutes! Putting a baby to sleep is exhausting work sometimes. I took off my glasses and closed my eyes to try to get some sleep myself. It didn't work terribly well, because the next thing I knew, Silas was awake and crying.

I don't know what woke him up. I just know it was only a few minutes after eleven and that I was tired. Into bed he went next to me and we both went to sleep until midnight thirty, at which point Smiley woke me up as he came to bed and I very nearly tried to kill him.

I'm a little tired this morning. Time for work!