boom boom

Rohan's new word is "boom"

everytime something hits the ground, he says, "boom"
everytime I say the word "boom," he says, "boom"

and yesterday after letting out a fart, he said, "boom."

Is he psychic?

I swear that Rohan is browsing the web when no one is watching him. Somehow he must be transporting himself out of his crib and in front of the computer to see what I've posted. The very same day I posted about his improved sleep -- Rohan fell off the wagon.

The reality is that ever since Rohan started sleeping better, there have been times when he has regressed. Generally whenever there is a major change to his surroundings or his schedule (time change, travel away from home, etc) he needs to be closer to us. This is especially acute if we're away from home.

Anyways, the other day we were at home and for the most part it was just like any other day. Rohan went to be around 8:30 -- about 15 minutes later than usual. He woke up around 10:30, again at 2:30, and again at 5. L and I have a system that has pretty much worked out to this: if he wakes up before 4:30 AM or so, it is my responsibility to get him back to sleep. This has more to do with keeping him from nursing himself back to sleep than anything else. But if he is up for more than 30 min or so, I hand him over to L.

With each wakeup, a quick 5 - 10 minutes of carrying him around did the trick and he was back asleep. Who knows what is going through his little head...did he get scared? hungry? thirsty? He never takes the water when I offer it to him, so I dunno.

Also, it seems unfair to make him cry it out when we don't know what ails him. Other nights (like last night) -- Rohan just wanted to stay awake. He kept pulling books off the shelves to read. So a healthy 1 minute of crying alone in his crib at 8:45 PM was sufficient for him to go to sleep quickly when I came back into the room.

sleeep

The latest gap to my last post is on order of 4 months. That's nearly 1/3 of Rohan's life. Its like saying I went 8 years without writing a paper...well i guess I did if you include the first 8 years of my life. How many papers does a 2nd grader write?

Anyways - I thought I would write about the many many things that have happened over the last 4-5 months. First things...Sleep.

In one of my last posts before the radio silence, I wrote about buying a book called, "The No Cry Sleep Solution." A highly rated book -- we looked to it to save our sanity and our kid. Rohan was waking up every 2-3 hours no matter what we tried. So we tried the book. And we tried...and we tried. It did provide some nuggets of very helpful information, but ultimately didn't get us to the 6-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep we longed for. Things we did learn from the book:

• how to keep the kid from falling asleep while nursing. This is key so he doesn't suddenly wake up in the crib and wonder how in the hell he got there
• the concept of a "lovey." Basically a stuffed toy that accompanies him to bed and is a bit of a "sleep trigger." Rohan loves his stuffed horse and we're already afraid of what happens when it falls apart (or worse -- simply gets lost)
• that pacifiers can be a real problem
• the value of a regular schedule / routine

But for whatever reason - Rohan just didn't respond very well to the soft approach championed by the book. But we persevered. For a while, we just slept on the floor with him. Since our bed isn't big enough to keep us all comfortable, we just made up a bed on the floor. That worked...for a bit

But it wasn't getting us any closer to where we wanted to be. And he wasn't showing any real improvement -- if anything he was getting more accustomed to having us nearby.

Throughout it all - a number of people proposed and swear by the "cry it out." If anything I was the most reluctant to go down that path. Having read too much Dr. Sears and Elizabeth Pantley -- I had visions of Rohan growing up to be a mass murderer.

As we tried to get Rohan comfortable in the crib by himself, the video monitor helped a lot -- We had experimented with giving him a bunch of pacifiers to self soothe himself if necessary. What generally happened was that he kicked them out of his crib when he pulled himself up. So we had to kick the pacifier habit before starting down the "cry it out" path...

So in March we tried it. And it wasn't easy...At all.

But over about 5 days or so, he started to get it. The bouts of crying diminished and we all actually started sleeping much better.

No questions that Dad had a much softer heart than mom and if it had been entirely up to Dad - Rohan would probably still be waking up every 2-3 hours. As it is, he is generally sleeping 8-9 hours without a whimper. Unfortunately the video monitor reached the end of its line (fell down the stairs), but now that he is sleeping well, we don't really need it.