Milestone

It's a BIG deal around our house.

There's your teaser.

As first time parents, we rocked Josh to sleep every night. We followed that by allowing him to sleep with us forever and then when he moved to his own bed we laid down with him until he was asleep. When we FINALLY broke him of that, we stayed upstairs in the next room until he was asleep. We did this for almost TEN YEARS. Now, I love my boy and I wouldn't trade the time for anything, but we weren't going to make the same mistakes as we did with Josh (and yet, we still do, huh??).

Our pediatrician has told us that we have to teach Ellie to go to sleep on her own so that she could sleep through the night on her own.

As the "Constant Readers" know, we've had sleep issues since we came home. Normally, Kevin puts Ellie to sleep and sits in the rocker in her room until she is asleep. Sometimes he goes to sleep with her *smile* and I have to wonder if that's the reason he stays!! So, while he and Josh were gone to Land Between the Lakes I decided IT WAS TIME to bring on "Operation Go to Sleep on your Own".

When she was really tired, we made a BIG deal of kissing all the babies and telling them "Night, night". Then, I gave Ellie ALL her blankies (there are a bunch of them she loves) and telling her "Night, Night Ellie". She still goes to sleep with her "baba" (and I don't plan on working on that just yet). I told her I would be across the hall and would be right back. Then she fell asleep on her own. The next day at nap time -- same process. Thursday night, same thing. Then when Kevin came home, I "taught" him the process. Knock wood, she has gone to sleep on her own every night without fuss since then. She still wakes up on occasion and we have to go in and pop in a pacifier, but overall, she is sleeping very good and sleeps about 10 hours. YAY!!! A big deal.

Coming soon -- Kevin's post about their trip to LBL.