Sleep tight...

(This is what they were doing while I was painting the garage last weekend)

Lately, Ryan has been traveling for work A LOT. He's been all over the country and back and we miss him terribly.

But.

I've been taking advantage of his absence to work on something he said he would not stand for if he were home to listen to it...

Lilly's sleep training.

I say "listen to it" because it does involve a bit of fussiness/crying. Lilly doesn't often cry and so when she does, it's heartbreaking. I think I can take it a little better than Ryan because I'm around her so much, but he has no tolerance for it. He WILL NOT allow his baby girl to cry. Whatever is wrong with her MUST be amended and she must be attended to ASAP. If we are all in the car and she starts to cry, he wants to pull over. She has him hooked.

So, while Ry's been gone this week, Lilly and I have made some great progress in regards to her sleep habits. She has NEVER fallen asleep on her own-one of us has always rocked her or she's fallen asleep in the car. She's never been put in her crib, been told goodnight, and left alone.

Until this past Thursday night.

I was hesitant to try it without Ryan here for support, but I knew he wouldn't go for it if he were here and therefore he wouldn't be much support, and since I'm primarily the one trying to get her to sleep everyday, I went at it alone. We had our usual night time routine--bath, food, story, rock--but instead of rocking her to sleep until her binky was hanging out of her mouth and she was twitching, I put her in her crib after a brief rocking--just enough to be sure she was drowsy.

She cried for 40 minutes the first night.

She cried for 15 minutes last night.

She didn't cry at all tonight.

We'll see if she wakes up here in the next hour or so and then decides to have her crying spell, but so far, so good. Her naps have been similar. I'll put her down when she's still awake and she eventually falls asleep for about an hour (hopefully that time will increase as we go).

She still wakes up once or twice for a feeding, but I'm working on putting her right back in her crib (as opposed to our bed) when she's done eating.

I've got a few more nights sans Ryan to get it all worked out.