Still Going...

I feel like we've moved back to the Bay Area for winter. Today will be day 4 of gray and rainy. It makes you appreciate how sunny it usually is here. The good news is that it helps the kids sleep in a little bit, but the bad news is that it definitely sucks the life out of the house.

Lily had one of her early-evening nightmares last night. Fortunately, I had just gone to bed when she woke up screaming. It's a lot easier to deal with that kind of thing at 9:30 before we've all settled in than in the middle of the night. Noah, on the other hand, has now had two consecutive nights of waking up screaming around 12:30 or so. Amanda got up with him both nights. If it happens again tonight we may have to let him scream a while.

It's sometimes difficult to gauge where the "tough love" line should be drawn. Is he really upset or is he just training us to come running when he calls? It may be a mixture of both. We are certain that we don't want him routinely waking up every night with an expectation of some attention.

Bedtime is becoming more difficult with Noah. If you say "bedtime?" to him he will make a face and make a negative-sounding noise. He won't sit still for his book anymore because he knows what is happening next. And he keeps fidgeting when we pray because he knows that is the last step. We never had bedtime problems with Lily like that. She would pitch a fit after we turned out the lights, but never at bedtime proper.

Plus, we can count on a good 30-60 minutes of babbling from him after he is put to bed. It's not screaming, so we can live with it. I don't think we're going to make his bedtime any later though.