Sunday morning

First off, two (re)finds of the day:

1000 Awesome Things - I haven't had a chance to go through the entire site, but just based on the first page, I can definitely say it's awesome. Came across the link at PostSecret.

FOUND Magazine - I remember spending an entire afternoon at one of my design jobs going through this site, reading other people's shopping lists and love notes and just random bits of paper. I often wonder what other people think of notes that I've dropped while shopping or walking, and if one of them will end up on this site one day.

It's an untypical Sunday around our house. Keith is off to the big city for the celebration of a family friend who is dying of cancer so Maddy and I will hang out with my mom for the afternoon. In reality, my mom will play with Maddy - or chase her, as she's started to walk lately - while I clean the house in anticipation of Keith's parents' visit this week.

Typically, Sundays are relaxing days. I try to keep the TV off for as long as I can when Maddy's up so she can play with her toys (or me) instead of getting distracted by the picture box. Today, with my mom here, the TV will likely be on more than I want, but it happens and I'm not going to get upset by it.

Another reason I've been trying the more music-less TV scheme is Maddy's attrocious sleep patterns. She sleeps fairly well during the day, 2 naps, usually 1.5-2 hours each. It's the overnight sleep that's the issue... well, still the issue, even after 10 months. There's so many back issues with her sleep that I just don't want to go into, but we've been working with her for a few months now to get her to sleep through the night. I have had success twice - only 2 times in 3 months has she slept straight from the time we put her down at 9pm and stayed asleep until 6am.

Her usual sleep pattern through the night is bed at 9pm, awake at 12 or 1 and up, fussing, crying or attempting to play until 2 or 3 and then co-sleeping with me until 6am. I'm done with co-sleeping; it's gotten to where she sleeps and I don't. I go back to work in 3 weeks. Co-sleeping has to end and it has to be now.

We tried the cry it out method to little success. I mean, it has worked in some ways - she went from sleeping in 45 minute stretches to 3 or so hours and being able to fall asleep in her crib rather than us holding her, but otherwise it was a pretty big failure. I don't take blame for it, nor do I blame Maddy, but I do place a fair share of blame on the public health nurses we had when she was born. (For more of a background on this, see this post.) With me going back to work so soon, I've become so frustrated with her and her inability to sleep at night that I've passed the job of 'fixing' her sleep off to Keith. I don't recommend this method to everyone, but in our case, and only our case, in my opinion, his method worked - he let her cry. For an hour. He was 10 feet away, in a different room, but he let her settle herself and she slept. I had a hard time waking her up this morning, in fact. But she slept. And that's the main thing.

Do I think we've messed her up by doing this? Hell no. I think she'd have much bigger problems if we let her sleep issues continue (and I'd have problems, too, with the sleep deprivation I've had for 10 months and going back to work and driving back and forth to work, but this is about Maddy), and we had discussed what we would do at length. I love her to pieces and would not hurt her on purpose. I think she feels the same way about her dad and I, too - she's still the same kid she was yesterday, with the exception of the walking. I don't think there will be any long-term ramifications from letting her cry herself to sleep. I refuse to be a helicopter parent and want her to be as independent as possible at this age. I will be there when she needs me, but she needs to start being her own little person, too.