On his own...

Last Wednesday, on the floor in my office, Tyler rolled from his back to his front for the first time! Thursday, he repeated this new trick for Tyson several times. And by Sunday, he could do it with ease, startling us with his speed. Congratulations, Tyler!

But rolling over was our official deadline for having Tyler sleep in his crib at night. That sounds alright - the crib is beautiful, and that mattress HAS to be more comfortable than the pack-n-play. But the crib is set up in the nursery, and Tyson has declared he is not going to take it apart to move it into our bedroom and re-assemble it. I briefly thought to myself "He can just keep sleeping in the pack-n-play. So what if the instructions said that once a kid can roll to his stomach, he shouldn't sleep overnight in it. They're just worried about liability." But, regardless of the unlikelihood of the pack-n-play posing a danger, the truth is, we don't want Tyler to sleep in our room forever, and the longer we wait, the harder it will be for him to adapt to sleeping in his own room. I'd read somewhere that "if he can see you from his bed, he'll come to rely on  your presence to soothe himself back to sleep." I'd thought to myself "He can't see me. It's too dark." But early Sunday morning in the dawn light, I noticed Tyler looking at me and blowing raspberries. A few minutes later, he had fallen back asleep. Hmmm.

And so we made the transition Sunday night. On our bed, Tyson carefully wrapped Tyler in his "14-22 lb" swaddle blanket (thank goodness they make swaddle blankets so big!!! This is the only thing that works to get him to sleep through the night!).Then we made the long journey through our tiny living room, turned right to head towards the guest bathroom, then left down the long, narrow hallway to Tyler's room. Suddenly, our house seemed to big, that hallway too long. Tyson tenderly laid Tyler down in his crib. "But he won't have any white noise! He's closer to the street. It's louder down here." Feeling like the Wicked Witch of the West for banishing my son from our room, I steadily responded, "He can have my air purifier from the living room." So Tyson plugged in the air purifier, and carefully angled it to blow clean air in the direction of the crib, so that it could supplement the ceiling fan in providing air circulation. We turned out the light, and made the long, arduous trek back to our side of the house.

We made our own preparations to retire for the night, and turned on the monitor. Glaringly bright lights leered at us, reminding us of our crime against our son. Tyson responded by taking the monitor into the kitchen, and a few minutes later, reappearing, having applied painter's tape over the lights. We tossed and turned, but eventually fell into a light sleep, always listening for any sound to come out of the monitor. At some point during the night, I felt Tyson climb back into bed, telling me "He's okay. He started to wake up, but he's falling back asleep." (The irony of being woken up to be reassured that someone else is asleep is not lost on me.) At 6:20 Monday morning, I once again walked the distance to Tyler's room, to discover him alive and well and still asleep. Cruelly, I woke him up to feed him so we could go to work.

Last night we repeated the ritual. I'm not sure that either of us slept much better. But Tyler did. Here it is, 6:27, and he's still asleep. And so I need to go wake him to feed him so we can go to work.

And the past two nights, Vader's slept, right by my side, on the floor.