My husband and I have never been wild crazy party animals on Friday nights. But this Friday night we decided to get a little crazy. Drinks, dinner, dancing, a movie . . . not our style. Crazy kids that we are, we spent two hours trying different strategies to get two screaming babies to bed without relying on the usual bedtime last resort method (i.e., me cuddling them separately in our bed until they fall asleep and then transferring them back to their cribs).
It was not fun, but we were not willing to let them cry it out. Certain cries I don't mind doing that with, but when they are beside themselves screaming bloody murder there is no way I can do that. We also don't want them to be dependent on me getting them to sleep in our bed, not to mention that it is really hard to do with two of them. So we tried my usual routine of putting them to bed, which failed miserably, as it has for three of the past four nights. Then we spent some time calming them down and seeing if they would get tired on their own while hanging out with us on the guest bed. Also not successful. Then we just put them in their cribs with the light on and sat by them and stood by their cribs shushing them when they got upset. It took a long time but eventually they settled down. We turned off the light and put the night light on and with more time and few gentle touches they fell asleep . . . finally.
They have been going down for naps okay for the most part although they don't seem as tired as they used to at nap time and take time to actually fall asleep after I leave them in their cribs. Could they be transitioning down to one nap a day? Tomorrow night we will try moving their bedtime later and see if that is the problem. But if that doesn't seem to work I may try to keep them up past their morning nap and force them into one nap a day for a week and see if it sticks. Wish us luck.
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