Did He?

My darling Robert is a bit of a handful. He has the potential to rank up there with Jack, and well, that is saying something. He can climb on top of and in/out of most everything. He is naked all the time, pants are no match for this nudist. He refuses to wear shoes. If anyone closes a door or goes outside he will scream and cry and bang on the door until you open it or let him outside. If he is playing with toys and another kid comes over and seems interested, he will grab whatever he is playing with and just start screaming in the other kid's face. So far this has worked for him, and other kids don't mess with his stuff. He is on the go constantly, turn around and he is gone, when you say no he just ignores you, and boy he makes me tired.

This leads to sleep- you would think that due to all of this expenditure of energy he would sleep wonderfully, but this would be wrong. He sleeps in a pack-and-play in my room. He nurses to fall asleep and in the middle of the night he wakes up to nurse himself back to sleep. He is usually in my bed when 5:30am comes around, at which time he thinks the day has officially begun. He lets me know by climbing on my face and putting his knee in my throat. He doesn't know how calm himself down or fall to sleep on his own, and finally I/We/Pete decided it had to stop!! This was further reinforced when the same day the doctor said Robert really needs to learn how to fall asleep without nursing; I mean he is 15 months old!!  I wasn't going to let him cry it out in our room so we moved Meg down here and put Robert upstairs. We have used some form or other of crying it out with all our children, but I hate hearing the crying. Something biological or evolutionary makes me more sensitive to it than other people in our house. Last night I put him to bed, nothing. I watch an hour or so of tv, nothing. I wake up this morning, slightly before 7, and nothing? So confused. Surely not. It can't have gone from horrible to wonderful in one night. This doesn't happen. I go upstairs to check on him, and he is stirring and waking up, so I get him. Then at breakfast once everyone is up I say, "So did he wake up at all last night? I never heard him." At this point the whole room starts laughing. They all tell me he cried ALL night long!! Pete had to get our big loud fan, turn it on high, and put it  right by the stairs to try and drown out the noise. The boys, who sleep across the hall, said Robert's crying kept waking them up all night long. While little ol' me slept through the night for the first time in like 2 years. In the end Pete thought Robert maybe slept 2 hours total. I have had to leave the house before while sleep training because the crying and not being allowed to comfort has driven me crazy, but to sleep through it?! Never would I ever imagine. The thing is Pete was banking on my hearing loss to help me get through it, and he was right. I hate it when he is right. Never before have we lived in a place where I slept any real distance from the kids. Here I sleep downstairs and they sleep upstairs. Pete has told me before I wasn't hearing things upstairs, like once a night Meg usually wakes up screaming but falls back asleep after 20 minutes, I just didn't believe him or thought he was exaggerating. Nope. Not at all.

So here is to hearing loss and maybe my baby learning to sleep through the night-maybe. Hopefully, he sleeps more tonight, either way, I guess I will be sleeping better.