Sleeping Strategies

We are still trying to figure out how to get him to sleep through the night. On many nights, he wakes up at least once between midnight and dawn. Sometimes several times. We've been using different strategies to get him to go back to sleep (e.g. feeding him, rocking him, letting him "cry it out", giving him shots of whisky) sort of randomly, which is probably just confusing him. He doesn't seem to know how to roll over and go back to sleep on his own if he wakes up. He might think that he needs our help to fall asleep, so he looks around and starts to cry and waits for one of us to come in and pick him up.

So we are trying to settle on a single strategy to use all the time. But the "crying it out" method is hard because he really gets upset and miserable, and the feeding/rocking methods involve multiple wake-up calls throughout the night. And lack of sleep is known to cause side-effects, such as acting like a whacked-out zombie and accidentally putting your car keys in the fridge.

That leaves whisky shots (Ok, no, not really). Tonight, Claire put him to bed later than usual. We'll see what that does. And maybe we'll try feeding him more right before bedtime, in case he's waking up because he's hungry. Maybe we'll try placing a small pizza in the crib with him in case he gets peckish.

The good news is, he is taking an interest in video games, particularly football. My long-term plan to make him a pale nerdy flabby kid who eschews athletics and healthy social contact is working to perfection. Unfortunately, he keeps trying to punt on first down. We'll work on that.



He always examines and/or chews on the tags on all of his toys, so Claire made him a "tag blanket" for Christmas.





I was trying to take a picture of him holding his new "Spud" Christmas stocking in front of the tree, but the little sneak kept reaching around behind him to grab at presents.