So, I had planned to share some details today about the stockings I made for our little fam (yes I know Christmas is over) I took some pictures… I don’t love them, and now they are trapped on another computer. I really need to get myself organized. But, I will hope to have that up within a few days. In the mean time. More about life as a mom… err day, errr day.
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What is up with sleep. Like for real. I think that becoming a parent and not sleeping is like getting a really bad head cold. When you are healthy and someone else is sick you think… “aww, colds are a bummer 🙁 thats too bad, pop some dayquil and drink some tea.” But when you get a head cold, your nose is either stuffed or running, your throat feels like it is full of knives, you can’t sleep because your head pounds and your sinus’ hurt and you would give anything to be healthy again and nothing seems to help, but then you get healthy, and you go back to “oh…. a head cold. Thats a bummer. Drink some tea.”
I have to be honest. I have a really bad case of I just want to sleeeeeep again. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world because Finley was an angel baby for the first 4 months of her life. She literally slept anywhere from 6-12 hours. It was amazing. If she wasn’t my third baby I wouldn’t have understood the gift this was, because Gabriel literally did not sleep until he was 2… and by sleeping I mean waking only 3-5 times a night. He has come into our bed almost every night of his nearly 5 years of life.
So, when Finley’s sleep derailed, I thought… thats ok. We had it good… but, I have to be honest, after 4 months of not sleeping again, I want to sleep. And if it isn’t Finley, is Gabriel. Matt is too tired to carry him back to bed so he usually goes and sleeps in another room. Cry face.
So, I had this wishful notion that once we moved the boys into their new room G would magically stop coming into our bed. But that didn’t happen 🙁 But then, after Christmas I fell upon a stroke of genius.
Bribery.
Yes, I am bribing my son to stay in his bed at night. We could call it a reward or positive reinforcement… but it’s a bribe.
I told him for every night he stays in bed he gets a sticker. When he reaches 20 nights he gets a small lego set of his choice. We have never done anything like this for him before, because frankly he is not one for delayed gratification, and he pretty much is not motivated by things like that… at least not in the past. I think somehow the combination of a sticker and lego, which he is suddenly very into may just be the winning ticket.
I am sharing this because maybe you want to sleep to. Yes… I know this is the time of our lives, and one day we will miss our kids being little… but for me at least, one baby in my bed at night is enough for now. Between the 2 of them there was very little sleep going on for us. While it isn’t consecutive, we are at 8 nights of G staying in his own bed.
8 nights. That may be more then his entire life average.
We both relish the sticker in the morning.