My Baby Guy is Growin' Up....

Last night was miserable for pretty much everyone in my house.  It's a toss-up as to whether it was worse for me or for my husband, as he was up more times than I was, but it usually only takes him about five minutes to get back into snore snooze-land.  On the other hand, although I was only up once, I have a raging cold right now and it takes me about forty minutes to fall back asleep...if I'm lucky.

So, why were we up?

I'll give you three guesses.

Yup, kids woke up screaming.  Three times.  Two kids, three times.

But, as you can probably figure from the title, our miserable night isn't exactly the point of my story.  It just sets up the circumstances.

About 2:50, the Baby Guy woke up screaming.  I let him go for a couple of minutes, because sometimes he will fuss himself back to sleep, but it quickly became clear that this wasn't going to be one of those times.  My husband was up with him the night before and it seemed to go pretty well (he was only up there for 15-20 minutes or so), so I asked him what he did.  "Turned on his music and held him until it stopped, then put him back down and he went back to sleep."

Ahhh.  The Standard.  Also The Best Scenario.  I figured I'd try that, but suspected it wouldn't go quite as well for me.  The Baby Guy is a Mommy's Boy, and I was afraid that when he realized it was Mommy who was holding him, one run of the music wouldn't be enough.  But I trudged up the stairs and went into his room, determined to at least give it a try.

Little guy snuggled into my shoulder immediately when I picked him up.  Even at 2:50 a.m., the snuggles can make me melt.  He put his arms as far around me as they would go and held on tight.  It was sweet, but also didn't bode well for putting him back down.

The music played.  I stood and rocked.  Baby Guy clung.  About ten minutes passed, and then something unexpected happened.  My little guy did something he has never done before.  He pulled away from me and looked down into his crib, then looked back at me.

"Do you want to get back in bed?"  I asked.

"Yes," he replied (using one of the five or so words of his that we can actually understand).

I blinked a couple of times, then kissed him, and put him back in his crib.  He didn't fuss.  I was amazed.  I covered him up, restarted his music, and left the room.  He stayed quiet.  I went back to bed and happily fell asleep went into my bathroom, took a (generic) Mucinex, then got back in bed and lay there hacking my head off for fifteen minutes while I waited for the requisite 4 hours to be up so I could take two more puffs on my the Birdie's Xopenex inhaler.  Then I lay awake for another 20 minutes listening to my husband snore sleep.  Ahh, the joys of being...sick.

But, only 20 minutes?  That's not too bad, right?  Yes, well, 20 minutes wouldn't have been bad if I had then fallen asleep, but what actually broke things up again was the sound of more crying.  The Baby Guy was awake again.  This time, my husband went up, and fortunately, it went as smoothly as my trip, with the Baby Guy again agreeing to be put down early.

And then, about an hour later, the Birdie woke up.  I asked my husband if he would go up even though it was my turn, and he took pity on me and went.  Again, we were fortunate since she had only kicked her covers off and replacing them was all it took to calm her down.

The rest of the night went fairly well, and I was eventually able to fall back asleep.  I'm sure you're happy to hear that.

Anyway, returning to my original point - the Baby Guy has never before indicated he was ready to get back in bed during one of these middle-of-the-night visits.  It's always been a case of me putting him down and hoping desperately while tiptoeing out of the room as softly as I could.  So I was surprised and pleased that he chose to go back to bed on his own last night, and I hope this is a new habit for him.