It’s a cacophony of sleep sounds at night. Her protests, as I tuck her into her bed. The sound of her hangers hitting the floor of her closet, as she enters it, pulls everything off the hanging rods and dumps it on the ground. Then the distinctive ‘whoosh’ as her door opens, and she creeps out into the halfway, curious as to the life that’s being lived above her, after it’s lights out for her.

She almost always ends up in our room, particularly when my husband is away. My take? I don’t care where she sleeps, as long as I, too, am sleeping. I don’t get enough of it. Does any mother? So I’m going to do whatever it is I have to do to get it. And yet, I have to laugh and roll my eyes at my own hypocrisy of days gone by. “Everyone has their own bed, their own room, and they need to stay in it. End of discussion.” It’s amusing to me how I was the perfect mother before I actually had kids. “Oh, I would never, ever tolerate that behavior from my child. Not in a million years.”

Those words? Need a little seasoning. They don’t taste that good.

I’ve read every book there is to read. I’m done with the books. I’m done with the ’styles’ of parenting. Are you attachment? Do you CIO in your home? Ooh, we’re in the throes of Ferberizing…

Enough.

At this point, I’m realizing that it’s a matter of what works for which kid at whatever point in time. That usually equals a mix of a ton of parenting advice I’ve read in the books, a lot of winging it and always, always, a silent prayer to get me through this minute. Please. Just this one minute…

Still, I’m tired. And frustrated. Feeling put upon at times; sometimes even resentful. I actually had an out-of-body experience the other day, wherein I looked at my hands typing on the keyboard, and thought to myself, “who’s hands are those? What the? Where am I? Who am I? How did I get here?” Turns out it was just a precursor to one of my infamous panic attacks. I don’t get them all that often, but when I do? Ouch.

I spent most of the day today running errands. At least the family joined me. And the first stop was at JoAnn’s, where I loaded up on some supplies for my sewing machine. Doll clothes are my new obsession. And pillows. And all of that creation of beautiful things is helping me get through these days. One at a time. It’s my outlet.

Tonight? Microwave popcorn, a cowl that I’m knitting for GiGi and “The Office.” And then? Off to bed. Hopefully, just myself and my husband. No tiny feet kicking me all night, no propeller arms slapping at me in the dark of the bedroom. No… no… Oh, who am I kidding? It is what it is, and it’s going to be what it’s going to be… Two adults, three dogs and an almost 4-year old, crammed into what I once referred to as the world’s largest king-size bed.

Hope you all sleep well tonight, yourselves…

Coco is sleeping through the night. She is sleeping all night long. Going down at 7 and sleeping through until 7 the next morning. This is not a joke.

I’ve written so many times about our need to sleep train the baby. She started out as a good sleeper, but somewhere along the way, it all went wrong. And suddenly, I had a 10-month old who was waking every two hours at night. And me? I went to her. So yes, I know it’s really my fault. But something in me would not let me leave her to cry it out. And crying it out? It worked like a champion with Pea, at a time when nothing else was working. It was so easy, she got it in about three nights, right around her first birthday (coincidentally, she started walking right around then, too, so maybe she was passing out from exhaustion at night after days spent waddling around our home).

But with Coco, I couldn’t do it. Was it because her nursery was right next to our bedroom in our old home? Perhaps. Or was it really my melancholy over her being our last baby? Highly likely. Honestly, I wanted to soak in every minute of her babyhood that I could. She’s so tiny and quiet and sweet and I just needed to hang onto that before she got up and walked away from me, which is right around the corner, I might add.

Who knew that all it would take to get this little bambini to sleep through the night would be a move to a high altitude up in the snowy mountains of Utah? Because seriously, that is the only thing that has changed! You know, when we flew up to Utah in December with Coco, she also slept through the night the one night that we spent in the new house. And then, we returned to Fort Worth, and it was immediately back to the every-two-hours-throughout-the-night schedule.

It’s been about one week now and I’ve been averaging a solid 8 hours each night. 8 hours!

Coco is up somewhere between 4 and 7 times a night. And Pea? What is up with little Sweet Pea? She’s fighting me tooth and nail to go to sleep. She comes up with a million reasons why I need to come back into her room after lights out. She needs her diaper changed. She wants to wear her monkey pajamas, not the Small Paul pajamas. She needs a sip of water, another story, her forehead rubbed, it’s too hot, it’s too cold. Eventually, after many return trips she will settle in. Until about midnight, at which time she is waking up, coming to her door and sticking her hand out underneath it, all the while yelling, “mommy! I’m here! I’m in my room! I need you…” So I go to her, tuck her in again and she’s quiet. Until about 4:30, which is when we have a repeat performance of the midnight waking. She will settle back in again after that, but not for long. By 10 minutes to 6, she’s calling for “Dora! And a smoothie! And strawberries! Right now!”

I feel so out of control. I’m coping. I will manage. But honestly? I feel like kind of a failure. We were on such a great schedule, everyone was doing their part at night, and I was feeling pretty good. But now, we’ve entered a dimension of constant chaos, all night long, and although I am not quite there yet, I am fairly certain that there is a meltdown with my name written all over it right around the corner.

I admit it. I’ve made excuses for not wanting to start the sleep training with Coco. She is my last baby, and there is a huge part of me that just wants to hang onto her “baby-ness” for as long as I can. Have I mentioned that she is now pulling herself up to her feet and cruising around the house? A major milestone, two actually. And yet when I see her wobbly little legs carrying her from sofa to table to ottoman, I want to cry. What’s the rush? But when I really, really dig down deep, I don’t believe that this feral need to go to her all night long is really about keeping her in this infant state for as long as I can. I hate to admit it, but I think it’s just laziness. With two girls, a husband who travels, a very needy Border Collie and some other stressors going on right now, I don’t think I can properly train Coco. I just don’t have it in me. There are too many things on our plate right now, and I’m just going to have to redo the training again in a month, and then in another month, and on and on. So why bother at all? And so now with Pea’s sleeplessness thrown into the mix, I’m feeling like my world is spinning out of control.

I usually have a plan. I love my lists, I read the books, I take notes and dog ear the pertinent pages and then… I go in for the kill. So this feeling of just not wanting to deal? I’m having a rough time with it. I do want to deal. I want my girls to get back on their sleep schedules. I just don’t want to have to teach them. Again. I’m going to see how long I can ride this wave of sleepless nights. I can’t keep cruising through the Starbuck’s drive-thru twice a day. I need to get a grip. Soon.

Yes, it is the first official night of Sleep Training 2008. Coco should have been up by now for her fist nurse-back-to-sleep session. But of course, true to form, she slept through it.

The last time I sleep trained her, she did the same thing. The first night, she slept for 5 hours, woke up to nurse and then slept for another 5 hours, thereby totally throwing her normal schedule of waking up every 90 minutes or so out the window. But I was so excited that I breezed through the next day patting myself on the back, all the while saying, “oh, this is so much easier than I remembered… so not a big deal.” And then… later on that night…

NO SLEEP…

Huh. Why does she do this? Trick me out so badly? Give me such a false sense of security? This sleep training is so hard, so very, very hard, and I just want to get on with it. Get is started. Train her. Putting it off by another night? It makes the whole cry-it-out aspect that much more difficult to stomach.

I’m going to say something I never, ever thought I’d say… Come on, little girl. Wake up. Wake up! Don’t do this to me. It’s so not funny…

And then, something happened. I’m not really all that sure what it was, but it was huge. My best guess is that it was teething. Or perhaps a stuffy nose. Or maybe just a mama who enjoyed being needed just a little too much (that’d be my husband’s guess). Whatever it was, Coco just had so much trouble sleeping. And she was probably waking up every hour or so. And I went to her, nursed her back to sleep, and then we’d go through it all again, one hour later. Not a big deal. Except that here we are, she’s coming up on one year, and I just never bothered to retrain her in the art of sleeping and so we are still on this ridiculous schedule, albeit at two hour intervals, a definite improvement on the former 90-minute schedule!

I thought I was fine, too. I’d pop out of bed in the morning, no problem. Sure, I drink coffee, but only because I enjoy it, not because I need it. Right? Right?

But by 4 in the afternoon, I was becoming a mess. A grumpy, no patience at all kind of a mess. And a couple of days ago, I looked in the mirror and cried. I look old. And tired. Like a tired 35-year old mama. I can see it in my eyes, which for the first time ever look puffy with dark half-moons underneath them. Something has to change.

So, we are gearing up for Sleep Training 2008. It worked with Pea. It’s worked with Coco once before. And I know it will work again.

I’ve mentioned this book before, do not judge me when I mention it again. “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child” has changed our lives and we will continue to use it in this household for as long as we have small children who do not know how to sleep.

Wish us luck. We begin on Tuesday night…

Pea was always a champion sleeper, from the time we sleep trained her at about one. She would turn in at 7 and wake up at 7 and we would never hear from her inbetween. And although recently we adjusted her bedtime by a half-hour so that we could get Coco down at 7, she took to the new 7:30 bedtime just fine. I think she liked the extra alone time with us. So that’s why this is coming as such a shock to me. I have tried what the books suggest, I have surfed the Internet for answers at unseemly hours of the morning and I’m pretty much finding the same information: keep putting her back in bed, without eye contact or speaking, over and over and over and over and eventually… she will get it.

Well, when the heck is “eventually?” Because it’s been two weeks now and our problem seems to be getting worse. Add into the mix: a nursing infant who doesn’t sleep through the night and a husband who is always away on business and then, just for good measure, throw in a mommy with a terrible and never-ending cold who until this morning thought she could handle this all, and you get: me. A mommy who has no patience left and is pretty sure things are never going to get better and that sleep? Oh, dear sleep? We’ll meet again in about 18 years…

I hope.

Pea, curled up on the couch, watching Dora. This would have been cute were it not for the fact that it was 5:47 in the morning and no one else on our street was awake yet.

About 5:00 this morning, we awoke to “mommy? mommy?” I looked over and there was Pea, standing next to my side of the bed. I took her back down to her room and got in bed with her, intending only to rub her head a little in the hopes that she’d fall back asleep. We both fell asleep. And when I woke up about an hour later, she was passed out, with her arm slung over my face. Then I fell back asleep and awoke about 7 to her kissing my face. Awesome.

But falling asleep with her in her bed is not how I want this whole new chapter of sleep to go for us. I’ve been very strict about sleep in the past, I am a firm believer in sleep training and I subscribe to Dr. Weissbluth’s process for achieving a well-rested family, found in his book “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.” I know that the cry it out method is not popular with everyone, but I say if it works for your family, than do it. And honestly, it works. Really well. So that’s how we’ve taught our girls to sleep.

But I was not prepared that I would have to re-train Pea now that she’s made the transition out of her crib. She did nap this afternoon, although she did it with her head at the opposite end of the bed from where I placed her pillow, and she refused to get under the covers but instead curled up with a light blanket over her. Big deal, right? She managed to sleep for 2 hours. And she surprised me again tonight when we put her down. She ventured out once to ask for “another hug” from my husband and myself. The second time she came out, she handed me my sneakers, which I’d left in her room. And so without a word, I picked her up and gently carried her back to bed, placed her in it, pulled up the covers and that was it. I didn’t say a word and didn’t make a fuss about it. She did a little singing and then… silence.

I might add here that my husband made a chart which he hung on the back of her bedroom door. When she follows the “sleep rules,” she gets to place a star on the date on the calendar of the chart. And then she gets a little treat. And please, don’t tell me that bribing my child is so wrong and how could I do this? I prefer to think of it as a reward system for following the rules. And really, do I need to tell you how hard it is to get a 2-year old to follow rules? It’s pretty darn difficult. So the fact that she gets the rules we’ve set out for our little family concerning sleep is pretty amazing, and so if for the next week or so I need to toss a little treat her way to reinforce this behavior? I’m going to do it. No way around it. We all need our sleep in this house.

Adding to the problem is this most awesome sleep monitor. I am so paranoid about rebreathing (thanks so much, Dr. Morgan… note the sarcasm) that I can’t get rid of this thing. It has a feature that you can turn on that sets off an alarm when it stops sensing movement… like breathing. And ours? It goes off. A lot. Like at the least once a night. And it wakes me up. I run to Coco’s room, feet barely touching the ground, to find that she’s just inched her way into a tight corner and so the monitor just can’t register her that far away. She is still breathing. But she’s awake now. Yippee.

My husband tells me every time to get rid of the thing. She’s almost seven months old. She knows what she’s doing. But the mama in me just can’t do it. I need that security. Because… what if?

Alas, I have to admit that my response time to the alarm has gotten much, much slower. We’ve been through this drill so many times now and she is almost seven months old…

And I am tired. And sick of loading up on coffee during the day to help keep me going. And the worst part? When I’m sleep deprived, I get really, really stressed out. By the dumbest little things. And when I’m really stressed out? I eat. Anything. And so that goal weight I was so close to? I am really worried that it’s going to start slipping away from me. I need to get control of this whole situation, and fast. And so I know what I need to do. I need to put away the monitor. And then sleep train Coco again. And then go to sleep myself. Yay.

Now, here we are, Coco is nearly 6 months old and she is not sleeping. At all. She’s napping all night long. Two hour naps, each punctuated with a quick nursing session and then she’s back down for another two hours. This goes on from 7 p.m., when I put her down, until 7 in the morning, when she wakes up. And I go to her, willingly. She is my baby girl, my last baby, and so I actually soak her in during these feeding sessions at night. I rock with her. I smell her head. I think about how wonderful life is going to be for her. And then I lay her back down into her crib and climb back into my bed. And think. And toss and turn. And make “to do” lists in my head. And plan the dinner menu for the week. And wonder why I haven’t been on the elliptical machine in a week. And then, I finally fall back asleep, only to be woken back up by her a half-hour later. It’s brutal and I’m tired and you couple that with a very, very active 2-year old and I’m just kind of beginning to get to the end of the rope here. I need some sleep. Desperately.

Pea was also a troubled sleeper. And I tried everything with her. Something called the “gentle” method, which turned out not to be all that gentle. And then we tried to “Ferberize” her. What a disaster that was. Finally, we agreed upon a method from a book called “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.” In three words: cry it out. And before you roll your eyes and say to yourself “what kind of a mother does that?” let me tell you that it works. And when you’ve tried other methods and they haven’t worked for your child, you try another one. Well, this happened to be our other one. No two children are alike, and what works for one may not work for another. This method was pure magic for us. Pea finally, at 11-months of age, began to sleep through the night. We’d put her down at 7 and she’d wake up the next morning at 7. We would not hear from her at all during the night. It was amazing and I was so grateful and well-rested and we just finally settled into a deliriously happy schedule in our household. And then Coco came along. And now, once again, there is little to no sleep. For me.

So, I am going to start this method with her tonight. And I’m going to stick to it. And with any luck at all, little Coco will be sleeping well in about a week. Sure, I know she’s going to wake up a couple of times a night to nurse; I get that and I’m fine with that. My goal is to get her into a sleep schedule that allows for these feedings at midnight and then again at 5 am. It’s realistic and would afford me the luxury of some much-needed rest that will hopefully alleviate some of the massive impatience I’ve been suffering with the last couple of months, which in turn will affect my little family in a pleasant way. So it is worth it. A little crying over the course of a week leads to wonderful things in the end.

How can this little angel baby cause so much strife during the midnight hour? How?

Note the drool.