Like a rhinestone cowboy.....

I've been shooting myself in the foot.

Curly Baby is not on an eating schedule and is still waking up every 3 hours each night. He doesn't even really nap on a schedule, though I try. Those three things Curly Girl and Boy were doing like a champ by 4.5 months old.

The eating doesn't bother me, I guess, because he is getting better. The napping, well, not every child naps the same. We were just particularly blessed with good LONG nappers in the first two.

But the night time thing was really starting to get to me. I'd go to bed at 10, wake up at 11 to feed the baby. Wake up a little before 2 to feed the baby. Wake up at 5 to feed the baby. The Curly Kids were up at 6, the baby was up at 8 and by 10:00 am I was ready for lunch and afternoon naps!

Then I remembered when we first moved to SD and Curly Girl started waking up in the middle of the night again (she slept through the night early). The Dr. told me that it was most likely my fault. That I was getting up at every little sound, being unaccustomed to having her bedroom so far away and that was really unnecessary at her age.

So I decided that from now on, I'm not getting up unless Curly Baby is crying. And after this week, I'm shutting the monitor off. The boys's bedroom is just through the wall from ours anyway. And we share an air duct, so the monitor isn't really needed when something is wrong.

The first night (a night we didn't give Curly Baby cereal because it wasn't really helping him sleep any longer), he slept from 8:30 to 7:00. Ate at 7:00 and went back to sleep until 8:30. It was awesome.

The second night, I woke up at 2:00. Curly Baby was talking. And talking. And growling, and talking... and then I thought I heard Curly Boy start to cry. So I got up to check on him, but when the bedroom door opened, Curly Baby saw me, laughed and started to kick his legs. I went to pull his blanket over him, and he held his arms up.
So yeah, I fed him. And was up again at 5:00. And he got up at 7:30.

After this week though, that monitor is off. And he's going to have to cry to get me to come in there. Because he can go all night (or at least 8 hours) without food, and I need to sleep more.

You'd think I was a rookie.

Oh, but look at this: CURLS!!!