Mid-Night Party

That's mid-night, as in "the middle of the night," not the actual 12:00 a.m. midnight, because the party happened at 3:30 a.m.

Now that EG is walking everywhere and generally running us ragged all day long, her sleep has dramatically improved. I guess the extra exercise is enough to keep her asleep for longer periods of time. (Because I'm putting this in writing, I'm sure she'll have two weeks of sleeping no more than two hours at a time, just to make a liar out of me.) She was asleep in her bed last night at 8:30. At 9:30, she woke up and it took a brief 10 minutes to rock her back to sleep. Thank goodness I went to bed right after that instead of practicing my normal idiocy of staying up all night reading.

At 3:20 (6 hours later!!), I knew from the happy sounds coming through the monitor that it was about to get interesting. When she became bored of entertaining herself in the dark, she cried out. I was on my way to her room with my pillows when Dave told me (through the monitor) that he was getting her. (Don't ask me where he had been. Only God understands his nighttime habits. Well, maybe Ella does, too.) He brought her to our bed, where I tucked her in between us to nurse. She nursed. The she fussed and scooted and kicked until I rolled her over to the other side to nurse again. When she was finished, she popped right up and try to raid my bedside table, talking and pointing. I put her back in the middle, shhh-ing and telling her to lay her little head down because it was bedtime. She did, for a minute. Then she started patting Daddy and saying, "Dada, Dada, Dada." This crawling, flopping, kicking, talking went on for about an hour. Each time she would get still and quiet, Dave would move so that the bed creaked, and that was reason enough for EG to sit up and play some more.

I finally took her back to her room at 4:30 to rock her to sleep. Oh, it didn't take but a minute. She was very still - not even picking her toes or pinching her eyelids or kicking her feet like she normally does when we rock. In the dim green light of the baby monitor, I could see that her eyes were closed and her breathing was even. I made my move to put her in her bed. She popped right up as soon as her head touched the pillow. I had been completely faked out! She was standing, talking, even bouncing a little when I got her out of the crib again. She pointed to the big bed, so that's where we went. She still crawled and moved and talked until I wrestled her down with her back to me and wrapped myself around her like a human straight-jacket. Finally, she was still enough to fall asleep. It must have been 4:45 at that point. Dave woke me up for my shower at 5:30. EG snoozed until after 6:00, and greeted me with a happy, energetic, "Hey!" when I walked in the room to get her.

I'm very thankful that this doesn't happen often. It usually takes less than 10 minutes to get her back to sleep when she wakes during the night, but every once in a while she is just too energized. I was tempted to send her with her father to the living room to play (since he admitted he was wide awake anyway), but I have a strict policy of keeping it dark and quiet during the sleeping hours because I don't want her to get any ideas that partying at 3 a.m. is an acceptable habit.

Her methods of fighting sleep are only getting more creative as she gets older, bigger, and stronger. This eyelid pinching thing drives me nuts. She grabs a tiny bit of skin between her thumb and forefinger, stretches it away from her eye, and lets it go so that it makes a little POP! noise. Some nights her eyes roll back in her head as soon as she reclines in my arms, and some nights I feel like we are battling to the death before she gives it up and sleeps. Those are the nights I leave her room weak and breathless from wrestling her in my arms. She definitely has her father's sleep personality, and I'm doing my level best to convince her that sleep is a good thing. For all of us.