Hoping For A Fresh Start

This Friday the Beene's move back to Seattle. We are so excited to move into what we think is a great house. It will be so wonderful not to have to have the 45 minute commute each work night with Max.

Developmentally Max is doing about the same. He knows his body parts, toys, household items etc.
You can see such a difference in his attention span when he's had enough sleep! He loves books as most kids his age do and he loves to hear the same ones over and over which can be annoying but shows that he is taking some of it in.

I've been reading a book called The No Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley. We decided to start introducing Max to some of the suggestions in the book and see how it goes before we move into the new house.

I'm pretty happy with how things have gone so far. I have proven to myself that Max does not need to nurse during the night. I've not let him nurse for the past 2 nights for a 6-8 hour stretch. This meant that me or Charles had to get up and stay up with Max rocking him to sleep.

We haven't been doing this recently because since we are both working now we take the easy route which is to let him nurse in bed with me and we all fall asleep eventually. This doesn't always work and has created a lot of problems for Max and us.

It isn't easy to get up at 2 in the morning and rock a crying baby back to sleep and then possibly have to do it again 2 hours later but if it means that eventually he won't need to nurse at night the theory is he won't wake us up and scream for it which is what has been happening. I'm totally surprised that Max will allow us to rock him to sleep without nursing at this point but he's done it twice so it can be done!

Our plan has been to get to bed early at about 9 or 9:30. This is absurdly early and hard to fall asleep at that time but I think it has helped. The quiet time is really nice even if we have to whisper and barely move.

That bring me to the last point. Logistically our rent house sucks!!! Max is practically in our bedroom here and if we are in the living room we have to walk through his bedroom to get to the bathroom. So annoying.

But our new house is a real house with separate bedrooms and bathrooms and we are really looking forward to that!