So the first week or so after bringing Noah home went SO well. He slept, we slept, and billy slept. Billy was a good boy thanks to all the sleep he was getting. The world was wonderful!

Those days are (mostly) over.

Billy has decided that 515-530 is a new fun time to start the day. Yay! And, for the last week, Billy (who normally asks for "night night" and goes easily to sleep) has been bawling his eyes out for EVERY nap and EVERY bedtime. I thought teething. Nope. I thought maybe he's having a hard time adjusting to having a baby around. Still possible but probably not. I thought maybe the time change has done some serious damage. Not sure it's a main culprit, but it definitely isn't helping the situation. Why on earth is my sweet boy going crazy?!?!

2 days ago I discovered a hole in his paci. More than a hole. A big gash. He chewed through it! I was immediately hopeful: no wonder he is having a hard time! He can't soothe himself to sleep because his paci is broken! Then, i got worried.

About 6 months ago when we left his paci at home and tried to get him to use an identical paci. He refused it. He knew it wasn't "his" paci. He must have sucked his paci to the perfect softness. Or, as kyle put it, "seasoned" it. YUCK! You see, instead of doing what good parents do and throwing away pacis every few months, we had let him have the same paci for a year (we're not nominated for any parent of the year awards...). AND instead of using that opportunity to either break him of the paci or get him used to using another paci, we continued to let him use the old paci (don't worry, we sanitized it...sometimes...).

The day had come. His old friend had to be tossed. CRAP.

I decided to remain hopeful, and let him use an identical paci. Same situation as before. Complete refusal.

So here we are. Through no choice of our own, we are weaning billy from a paci SO much earlier than we had ever planned. We wanted to wait till he was old enough to understand that he didn't need the paci anymore. He's definitely not there yet. Now he needs to find a new way to soothe, and here is where the real issue starts...

Kyle and I have always said we won't rock our kids to sleep. Rather, we decided we wouldn't allow the rocking to be a necessity (we've rocked him many times, we're not completely heartless). Guess what happens to be the only thing that will peacefully get our little man to sleep...yup.

But we're sticking to our guns. For one week we will be letting him figure out how to soothe himself to sleep. This involves a fair amount of crying, and whining...and not from just billy. It's so hard to hear him cry. But i think it's going to work. We let him cry/whine for 20 minutes, then we go and comfort him, then we repeat. Last night it took 40 minutes to get to bed. He woke up in the middle of the night and it took about an hour to fall back asleep. I know it's a controversial way to do things, and I know it sounds harsh. Trust me. Half of my brain is saying "just go rock the poor kid! he's only little for so long! he needs you!" And the other half is saying "he needs to be able to comfort himself. He's old enough. You're not killing him." I know he needs consistency though, so this is how it is going to be for at least one week. At which point we'll reevaluate.

I knew this would be really hard emotionally, but i didn't really expect it to be so hard physically. See, billy woke up at 315. He eventually fell back to sleep around 415, at which point Noah was awake and ready to eat. Around 505, Noah was back to sleep and I crawled in to bed. 520 rolls around and Billy is up and ready to start his day. I can't wait for nap time :o)

I know this won't last. Things will get better again. It could be so much worse. Instead of a fussy or colicy infant, I have the worlds most calm and easy baby. Thank God for that!