Naptime? The lad doth protest

Eliot is changing every day, and it is so much fun to watch and be a part of.

His crawling has really gained speed. You really have to keep an eye on him, lest he get it in his head to speed over to the dog's water bowl, stick his hand in it, and then hoist himself up on the edge and turn it over. It's a big bowl. It holds a lot of water... but on the bright side, it forces me to clean the kitchen floor a bit.

Eliot is also experiencing some developmental changes in the arena of sleep. First of all, he's been taking really short naps. Like 30-40 min naps. Too short. Also, sometimes he gets really pissed about taking a nap and stands up in his crib and wails for 30 minutes, or sometimes an entire hour until I finally give up on naptime and get him out of the crib and wait until the next sleepytime. This morning he cried for 30 minutes before falling asleep for morning nap. Because he gets so pissed lately about taking naps, we've started to get tired of spending a lot of energy calming him down and rocking him to sleep. So, we've decided if he's pissed in our arms anyway, he can be pissed in his crib and cry it out until he's ready to go to sleep. We had gotten into the habit of rocking him to sleep. But it's not working anymore, so we're ready to institute a regular naptime and bedtime routine -- book, rocking, singing for a few minutes -- and then put him in his crib whether he's awake or asleep, and if he's awake, then he can cry until he's asleep. So far, the past few days since we've implemented this, it takes 10-40 minutes of crying before he falls asleep. It's hard for him to settle down when he can pull himself to standing and scream at the door of his nursery. But he eventually figures it out.

Also, for his one middle-of-the-night feeding (usually around 4 am), after I nurse him, he isn't falling back to sleep. That has gone on for about a week. I put him back in his crib and he wails for like 30-40 minutes. So, I pulled out to my favorite sleep book again, which I haven't read in like 5 months, and it turns out that after 9 months, he probably doesn't need to nurse anymore in the middle of the night, and you'll especially know that's true if he doesn't go easily back to sleep after the feeding. Ah-ha! So, starting last night, he went down at 7 pm and woke up at 7 am with no nursings in between. He did wake up at 10 pm and cry. I think we probably woke him up with some noise. Brady went to check on his diaper, and held him for a few minutes, and then put him down, to which Eliot keenly protested for about 10 minutes. Then he fell asleep until 7:15 am.

I'm excited about no more nighttime nursings. I know he might still wake up sometimes, but I think he will get the picture pretty quickly that even if he wakes up, nothing is happening, no milk is coming, it's still dark outside, go back to sleep.