This weekend Kaylin got to meet her cousins Bradyn and Kiera (not to mention her other cousins Sherri, Jason and granola eatin', hemp-wearin' BC-ite Brenda). She met her first “big dog” (and had the cries scared right out of her when Whisky barked one of those bellowing barks that reverberates deep in the pit of your gut)…and she and Kiera beat up on little Bradyn. I think it was the girls way of saying “Welcome to Ontario granola eata'!”
The weekend was pretty packed, with a barbeque at Larry and Liz's to celebrate their return from Africa, where Kaylin crawled around, harassed their cat, and generally had a blast. We got her home around seven and started the “going to sleep” process.
Sunday was loads of fun, I haven't seen Brenda in a few years, and the last time we saw Kiera she was just a few months old. She's walking with the help of one of those walker toys (which inspired Kaylin to start motoring around he house on her walker toy when she got home), and she's a little brute, beating up on her poor cousin Bradyn and trying to suck on her face on more than one occasion.
Sadly our visit was all too short. We got to London around noon, had lunch with grampa and gramma, popped over to Ryan's (hoping to visit Ryan, Kari, Paige, and the newest addition to their family Cordeila), but we missed him (because he was apparently locked in his basement battling the denziens of the 4th level of hell…or perhaps a leak, I get easily confused by the two). We went to Sherri and Jason's around 3, and stayed until about 4:30 when we decided we needed to head back to “the 'Jax”.
Kaylin loves seeing little people her own height, so she had a blast, going so far as to babble about her day pretty much the whole way home. She was hilarious, chatting, getting mad a couple of times because she was bored, but generally having a good old time in the back of the car.
She fell asleep around Milton, and napped a little bit until we got home. Then we got her ready for bed and put her down for sleep.
Last week we started the whole “crying it out” process. We've read a half dozen books on the subject (and by “we” I mean “Charlene” has read), and we realize the difference between all of the methods. Until a couple of months ago, we took turns rocking her to sleep. Then she decided she would only be rocked by mommy. Then she decided she would only go to sleep while being nursed by mommy. Then she decided that she wouldn't bother going down after being nursed and would require a minimum of an hour of rocking, in which she wouldn't truly sleep.
We finally realized that she's crying it out on her own, the only difference is that it's getting longer and longer, and she was starting to get miserable in the morning too. We realized we had to do something drastic, so crying it out was all we could do.
The first night, we gave her a bath, I read “Goodnight Gorilla” to her (by “read it to her” I mean she turned the pages willy nilly in both a forward and backward fashion and I made up words for the pages). I then kissed her, and put her in bed, where she cried for 10 minutes. Char went in, hugged her (but didn't take her out of the crib), and told her it was bed time. 10 minutes more of crying I went in and did the same. 10 minutes later Char repeated the process, and 10 minutes after that I went in for a final time. She was sitting up crying, but not really serious about it. I laid her down and told her it was bed time one more time while I rubbed her tummy. She cried a little bit, and then went to sleep before I got out of the room.
The next four nights were roughly the same varying between 40 minutes and 30 minutes. Saturday though, it was an hour. Then came Sunday night. We put her down…she complained a bit (but didn't cry or scream really), and then settled down and got to sleep. Fifteen minutes later. Last night, same routine, but the smallest amount of complaining, and five minutes later she was out.
PLUS she's sleeping better every night. Hopefully this is the start of her learning how to sleep.