Thursday, December 29, 2005

Sleep in Heavenly Peace. Please? Let me talk about sleep for a minute, and then we'll talk about Oliver's Christmas. I promise, we'll get to the good stuff soon. But first, let me explain why sleep and Christmas were so interlocked this year. (Here's a cute picture to hold you over.) Yes, yes, Christmas. The lights, the festivities, the nog. Tidings of comfort and joy. Except we were terrified. See, we had started sleep-training Oliver just a couple of weeks ago. We got tired of holding him for thirty, or sixty, or ninety minutes at a time during his naps, and wanted to move him toward sleeping by himself. "Where" didn't matter - he could sleep in the crib, in his co-sleeper, on the bed, under the Christmas tree. I didn't really care, as long as he was sleeping on his own. So we started working on him, and started seeing progress. (For those of you taking notes at home, we're using Elizabeth Pantley's book, The No-Cry Sleep Solution.) We could get him to sleep successfully for twenty or thirty minutes by himself on the bed, and on rare occasions, as long as forty or fifty minutes. Not fabulous - we were still bouncing him around on our red rubber ball when he wasn't on the bed, but it was progress. So Christmas was coming. and it meant two days of driving - one day down to Oregon and one day back - and three at Uncle B and Aunt N's house, including several hours spent at someone else's house for Christmas dinner itself. The car rides, we decided, would be somewhere between pleasantly surprising (he might sleep for a good long while) and horrific (screaming, screaming, screaming.) We were convinced his naps would be whacked out, because he would be in a strange environment. We brought all of the things that he needed for sleep - his white noise machine, his lullaby CD (which plays at the same time as the white noise machine, for reasons that only make sense in my own brain), his two swaddle blankets that we use to double-swaddle him. We borrowed a balance ball from our hosts - too small, but at least it was a ball. We thought we were in for a miserable four days. The ride down was no picnic, but it wasn't bad. We drove a rented car, which was big and luxurious and smooooove. Oliver slept for a while, woke up and played, and then screamed and went to sleep. R fed him on the road in the parking lot of an Arby's. Like I said, not bad. He slept like ... well, like a baby ... on that first night. He woke up often, and because we were in a full-size bed, he slept between me and R, so both of us were kept awake. But it wasn't awful. Naps, amazingly enough, were hardly an issue during the entire ordeal. When it was time for him to sleep, he went down with a minimum of fuss and slept quite well. One of us or the other sat outside his door (terrified that he'd roll off the bed). But surprise, surprise, he was great. Even on Christmas day, when he was bombarded by sensory overload, he slept surprisingly well. We must have looked pretty funny every time he went down for his naps. Whoever had sleep duty would come up and say the same thing. "He went down really well, he slept forever by himself. I couldn't believe it." Yet, each time it was true. Each time, we couldn't believe it was working. I even had a couple of episodes where I put him on the bed before he was completely asleep (deep breathing, no body motion at all.) After a little tossing and turning, he would settle right down and conk out by himself. This may not sound like much, ye non-childbearing people, but it was a big big deal for me and R. And Christmas itself? Yes, it was fabulous. There were clothes, and toys, and clothes, and toys, and more toys. My grandmother knitted him two sets of mittens and stocking caps. (I love my grandma.) And another relative, sort of a grandmother-in-law, went to the trouble of making him an enormous quilt of his own, with dozens of tiny patches of things like Bugs Bunny, kittens, trucks, Tiggers, and other kid stuff. It's an amazing piece of work, and R and I both got a little teary when we saw it. We have a dozen new ornaments that we can tell him came from his very first Christmas, including one adorable piece with a photo of him in his little red union suit, looking for all the world like Santa's littlest helper. The best present of all, though, was experiencing all of the sights and memories of his first Christmas. I loved helping him "unwrap" each of his presents. I would find a loose corner of wrapping, let him grasp onto it, and pull the present in the other direction, so the wrap would come off in his hand. He got to meet his cousin Cutie-Pie for the very first time. She's a ripe old 2 1/2 now, and talks and walks and uses sippy cups by herself. (He suddenly has taken an interest in using his own sippy cup, and I think it has something to do with cousin envy.) His grandmother on R's side was there, and everybody just took so much joy in seeing him and playing with him. We have fifty squijillion pictures of him. R actually made several photo books for our faraway relatives with pictures of his first six months, and every one who received one was awestruck and touched. (Yes, he's that cute.) I'm already excited (and a little exhausted) in anticipation of next year's Christmas. And his first birthday. And his first real Halloween. And his first real Independence Day. And the first summer where he can run around barefoot. Holy cow, he's got a big year coming up. 9:50:23 PM     Speak up!  []