well rested - shhh

I'm actually afraid to talk about this, so I figured writing about it would be a good way to celebrate without running the risk of jinxing it.

In November we drove down to Florida to visit with John's mom.  The drive down and the subsequent stay there really threw off Ari's sleep schedule.  Up to that point, he kind of just created/maintained his own sleep schedule, he was a really great baby and had been sleeping through the night (for the most part) since I had returned to work in June.  The Florida trip threw everything out the window.  When we got back it was to the point where he would only sleep if one of us was holding him.  Although one of my favorite things to do is take a little nap with him, sleeping in the twin bed in his room with him is a far cry from "taking a little nap".  After heeding the warnings from some of my Mommy & Daddy, Auntie & Uncle, (and one "uncle" who happens to be a pediatric nurse) friends on Facebook, we decided we needed to kick this bad habit before it developed into a 6 year old Ari crawling in bed with us.  We started the Cry It Out (CIO) method around the middle of December. It really worked to get him to go down for the night, though the first few days were horrible. Basically we'd let him cry for 5 minutes before going back in his room to comfort him and we'd repeat these intervals until he fell asleep. Thankfully the longest was a total of 40 minutes, but possibly the 40 longest minutes of my life! John was the one going in to comfort him but listening to my baby cry without going to him was really painful.  Anyway, CIO lasted about a week and Ari started going to bed without much complaint each night since the beginning of January.

After successfully living through a week of CIO, with the exception of a few 'I can't find my binky' freak-outs moments,  Ari started sleeping through most of the night but he was not sleeping very late in the AM.  Without fail he would get up between 5:30 and 6:00 every morning and he was quick to let you know that he was ready to be out of his crib - read as: screaming like he was being murdered in the face - so we'd run in with a bottle to calm him down (and keep the neighbors from calling DYFS).  Not a big deal for me since I get up at 4:45 and I'm usually out the door by 5:30, but I know John would definitely like to sleep past 5:30 considering he has the toughest job in the world - he works from home full-time and takes care of Ari.  Many nights John is up into the wee hours of the morning catching up on work he couldn't get done during the day, though he admits sometimes this is due to the fact he just rather play with Ari than work but still, 5:30am-1:00am is a really long day regardless of the circumstances.  This past Sunday night, Ari went down at 8:00pm and got up at 7!  When he woke up, he didn't cry, he just played in his crib until about 7:30 when John grabbed him!  The same happened yesterday.  Today, my work from home (WFH) Wednesday, he slept until 8am!  I still woke up early (6ish) out of habit, but I was able to go back to sleep until about 7 when I decided to get a jump on the day and I was nice to get up because I wanted to, not because I had to!