Bedtime

Tonight, I'm sitting on my lovely cushy IKEA couch while I type.  Jesse's sister, Rachel, got a new laptop this holiday season, after her old laptop broke.  Jesse, being both bored and always inclined to take things apart to see if he can fix them, did just that.  There was one little tiny piece that needed to be re-soldered, and voila, it worked again!  Rachel was generous and let us keep her old laptop, which is just almost like a second Christmas.  I can sit on my couch and do my computer stuff!  Instead of in a hard chair under a drafty window!!  Granted, it's a very slow machine, and definitely acting it's age... but so is the desktop computer I've been using: Jesse's hand-me-down after my computer died several months ago.  (It's so tempting to think of buying a shiny new computer with tax returns this year, instead of putting it in savings in case this unemployment thing drags on forever...)

Anyway.  That's not the reason for my post.  I just had to gush about it for a minute.  Because it feels so luxurious to not be chained to a desk.  Even though I still have to be chained to an extension cord, because the laptop battery needs replacing.  ;)

The real reason for this post is bedtime.  "Duh," you're thinking.  "That's the title of the blog post, after all!"  Well, you're right.  I'm being obvious.  But bedtime this week has been such a great discovery!  Let me tell you what bedtime has been like for about the past year:

It would take no less than an hour.  Every. Single. Time.  Sometimes it would take at least twice as long.  It always involved sooooo much singing, reading, soft music, fans blowing for white noise, laying down and cuddling, shushing, heating up rice bags, and on and on and on and on.  Melinda and Jacob would giggle and play and turn their lights on and climb furniture if we dared leave before they were completely settled down.  Alex would take a maddening amount of time rocking, patting, nursing, etc. before he would finally, finally fall asleep and leave us to our treasured, quiet, adult time.  And often, he would wake back up and need even more rocking, patting, singing, nursing, whatever before he would fall back asleep.

When we moved to Colorado, we continued - as closely as possible - to follow those same routines.  But somehow, in a rather sudden way, Melinda and Jacob stopped needing all the jumping through hoops for bedtime.  It might have been the very old-school GloWorms that we started giving them when we left.  Or the change of location.  But at any rate, as soon as we started living in our condo, once we left them in bed, they have generally stayed in bed.  Every now and then someone gets up to use the potty, or to complain of an aching leg, but it's the exception.  And they even stay all night.  They aren't waking up in the middle of the night to come lay in our bedroom anymore.  They stay in their own bed until they wake up in the morning!!  It's heaven!! 

But Alex continued to give us problems.  I ended up finding a good compromise by taking my iPod Touch with me when I would lay down with him, so that when he took an hour or so to fall asleep, at least I had something to do.  Mostly I would read my scriptures on my iPod, but sometimes I listened to a podcast or an audio book, or would sneak in a game or two.  But a few nights ago, Jesse's sister Rachel, brother Ben, and his wife Brea made arrangements to come over and play Settlers with us after the kids were asleep.  I was anxious to play, and Alex was taking for.ev.er. to fall asleep, just being wiggly and goofy and not laying still.  After they had been over for 20 minutes, and I was getting more and more anxious to get out there and play, I finally gave up.  I set up the baby gate in our door, made sure Alex had everything he needed, and left.  He protested loudly for about half a minute, and got quiet.  About a minute later, he cried halfheartedly for a few more seconds, and then I could tell he walked away from the door and climbed in bed.  He was completely calm in only about 2 minutes from the time I had left my room.

I did it again the next night.  He reacted about the same way.

I did it again last night.  I hadn't even finished filling up a glass of water in the kitchen before he was calm and quiet.

I did it again tonight.  And again, he protested very loudly when he knew I was leaving.  After all, he's had me tethered to him since he was a newborn infant, me not leaving until he was good and asleep.  It breaks my heart a little to walk out the door when he's basically screaming for me to stay... BUT, it wasn't even a full 20 seconds before he stopped crying and went back to bed.  And that was the last peep I heard from him.

Can I just tell you how freeing it feels to not have to waste an hour or more of my evening time to get him to sleep?  My quiet time starts at 7:30 now, instead of 8:30 or 9:00pm.  It is marvelous.  So wonderful. 

I have no idea if this will last forever... but I hope it does.  Also, I used to pick him up and lay him in Jacob's bed after he fell asleep, but I'm too nervous to do that after he's fallen asleep on his own, lest I wake him and have to calm him down again.  So I can't go rummaging through all my sewing stuff that is being stored in my bedroom while he's in there asleep.  Maybe I'll get up the courage to try moving him soon, but for now I'm just enjoying the fact that he's big enough to go to sleep on his own, with so very, very little complaint.  It's like I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Think about going away for a night or two.  Contemplate life with a hassle-free bedtime routine.  Mmmm.  Good times.