Progress Report

I'm proud to say that last night BOTH girls slept ALL NIGHT LONG!!  WOOO! 

Lydia's progress:
This little miss used to be my perfect sleeper, 3 months old she was sleeping 12 hours a night with consistent naps during the day.  5 months hit and for some reason I just couldn't get it right. No matter how much food or what food I fed her she just wasn't sleeping anymore.  Now here we are at almost 7 months and I've got it down. =)  I already talked about our night Saturday night, so Sunday night I put her to bed at 7:00pm. I did the bottle first and then everything else. She was awake when I laid her in the crib. So much so that I thought for sure she was going to freak out after a few minutes. I came downstairs to chat with family and check on Natalia and then turned on the video monitor and Lydia was out cold! She stirred a little twice throughout the night and I could hear some of her little baby chatter but she would fall back asleep by herself. She slept until 5am!! This hasn't happened in a couple of months. When she woke at 5am I applied my tips again and she was out until 8:15am!  I felt so giddy Monday night thinking she's doing it, it's working  Monday night she slept until 10:30pm and then slept until 8:30am!!  And last night she slept ALL NIGHT!  On top of all that naps are going soo much better.  Part of it all is teaching her how to fall asleep on her own without the bottle.  With that skill she's been doing so much better and we did it without crying it out which I LOVE.  It's been such a trip putting her down wide awake, happy smiling kicking her legs at me, and then turning on the monitor a couple of minutes later to find her fast asleep.  She even managed to free one of her arms at some point last night, so tonight we'll begin breaking the swaddle and go ahead and pull an arm out right when she goes down. 

Natalia's progress:
Natalia really wasn't an awful sleeper anymore.  I mean we haven't had the best of luck with her ever, but she's definitely gotten better.  So really I just needed some help getting us back on track because the last few weeks have been going down hill.  She'd been stalling at bedtime/naptime to stay awake and waking up too early in the morning. And sometimes waking throughout the night, whether it was a nightmare or just her waking to play in her crib.  We are borderline ready to give up nap so to test it Shannon just wanted me to move up the time we give her a nap and make sure she doesn't sleep more then two hours.  We've been in her room to read by 12:45pm and so she's down and asleep by 1:30pm at the latest.  Bed time we start the girls bath at 7:00pm, once that's done Lydia goes down first and then I get Natalia down.  So she's probably asleep by 8:15pm at the latest and then she's sleeping until 8am every morning!  Once we are fully back on track then all we have to do is wait until she gets rid of that nap and then we can move her to the toddler bed.  And, then of course if we have issues with that I will feel a little more prepared to handle it... and then of course I'll have Shannon's number in case we need help. ;)