It Was the Best of Nights, It Was the Worst of Nights

Sunday night, after a long day, Kevin was ready to go to sleep.

He crashed at 7:30 p.m., which is a little earlier than usual, but after a long weekend trip to visit family, he was tired. He hadn't slept very well Saturday night, so we were hoping he would be tired enough to sleep.

What do you do with a sleepless baby?

He seemed to be doing fine. At 9:30 p.m., we went to bed, and he was sleeping in his own bed. We quickly drifted off to sleep, feeling pretty good about the way the night was going.

What felt like a long time later, I began to have restless dreams. In my dreams, I was nursing Kevin, but he wouldn't go to sleep. I dreamed that if I fed him with the correct combination, he would stay asleep, but I kept getting the wrong order. Frustrated, I finally woke up fully to realize that it wasn't a dream, and Kevin was wide awake. He would nurse for a few minutes, and then cry. I didn't know what was wrong, but after a few more minutes of this, I was feeling tired and a bit grumpy.

At that point, Grig woke up and volunteered to take the baby for a while. Fearing that he was in pain from teething, he said he was also going to give him some Tylenol. I agreed, and I dozed off again. An hour or so later, he returned with the baby, and I tried to help Kevin fall asleep. However, now the dog was up and panting, so Grig couldn't sleep either. Finally, at 1:30 a.m., he decided he might as well take the baby out.

At that point, I finally stopped being selfish. "No," I told him. "You have to get up at 4:00 a.m., but I can sleep in. I'll take the baby and the dog so you can go to sleep."

So, Kevin, Dakota, and I went out into the living room.

It was a long night. I turned on Kevin's videos, and he sat quite happily on my lap, but he just didn't want to sleep. As tiring as it was, we enjoyed our time together, and it really wasn't that hard to stay awake with him. I had a pretty good time.

At 3:50 a.m., Kevin finally gave up the fight and fell asleep. Wearily, we went back into the bedroom, and I laid Kevin on our bed and tried to go to sleep. However, by that point, though I felt exhausted, i couldn't sleep anymore. It wasn't until Grig left for work that I finally managed to go back to sleep.

We slept pretty good at that point, and then at 9:30 a.m. I was awoken to Kevin pounding on our bedroom door, ready to go out and play.

I don't know why he had such a hard time sleeping those two nights, but last night he slept much better. We all did, in fact.

Kevin's spoiled us. He's always been a good sleeper, so we haven't had too many of these sleepless nights. Strangely, he sleeps worse now than he did as a baby. I'm about ready the wean the boy. At 17 months, he doesn't need to be waking up every four hours or so.

It's going to be a hard transition for him, but we know he can do it.

He's a pretty cool kid. Even after frustrating nights like this, we wouldn't give him up for anything.

That's what being a parent's all about.