Cry it out girl…

I took away Lola’s naps a couple weeks back and at first it had major success. 

It was heaven.

She was a bit tired by 4 p.m. but hung in there until 7:30 which is an amazing bedtime.  Clay and I obviously enjoyed having the evening to ourselves.  Lola likes to be entertained so we always felt like one of us was entertaining her instead of each other. 

Lately, for some reason, it seems like she is adapting to no nap and now trying to go back to her old ways of taking forever to fall asleep and demands me lay with her and wants to play with my hair and stay awake forever.  When we first took away naps, she would lay down at 7:30 and be out in 2 minutes.  No hair playing, no crying, no tossing and turning.  It was great.  I get some nights will just be harder, but I feel like we are going back to the old ways.  She is waking up every few nights in the middle of the night and staying up for hours, so maybe she is just overtired.

Without the naps, she was actually getting as much sleep as she was with naps. I hope we can correct this again. 

The last two nights I just finally had to let her cry some.  The first night after she cried for awhile I went in and set next to her… It was an hour and a half ordeal.  And tonight I let her cry with the door closed, then went in and tucked her in again and told her no more crying and I would leave the door open.  So she battled trying not to cry so the door could be open and I stood in the doorway peaking in just enough she could tell I was there.  She didn’t cry and stared right at me until she finally fell asleep.  Took 30 minutes tonight.  Let’s see how tomorrow goes.  I need her to learn to fall asleep on her own without me in the room, because then I feel like she will have a better chance of staying asleep through the night without feeling like she needs me.  I read (ya, ya, ya) that if your toddler isn’t sleeping good be sure when you put them to bed that the room is the same way it’s going to be all night- so no momma.  If it isn’t, then when they wake up at 2 a.m. they notice what’s missing, and in our case, that’s me.  I feel like the sleeping just needs to be fixed by now.  Clay and I now know what it feels like to have a baby asleep by 8 p.m. and we can never go back!  Hahahaha…  

On a side note, but important:

Her ears stopped draining finally and we went a few days without her mentioning them, but in the last 36 hours she has been telling me they hurt.  So I hope the ear infection isn’t still present.  We got back to the doctor on Wednesday. PRAYERS!  It will be over 6 weeks if there is still an infection.  Surely not!!!!