one small step

It is official.  We flipped the switch. We bit the bullet.  We mustered up our courage and decided that tonight was the night.  Emma is getting older, more social, and more ornery.. meaning that she is more difficult to get to sleep and more difficult to stay asleep because she enjoys the pleasure of our company too much.

It was time. Past time. Emma is no longer the sweet newborn that sleeps 20 hours of the day, whether we hold her or not. I have started doing a dance to meet her demands for how she wanted to get to sleep - and sometimes it would take hours until I could put her down in her bed for the night.

Tonight, we started The Routine: our new bedtime ritual that will soothe her and trigger her to know "its time to go to sleep" - and then we put her down and closed the door.  One and a half hours of intermittent crying later, she is sound asleep.

I am a bit relieved actually.
Marc was older and more stubborn when we finally did this, and he had 4 hours of continual crying for our first night of sleep training.  If we made it through THAT, we can make it through anything!
Hopefully Emmalyn will catch on quickly.

And so this is just one small step towards independence, one giant leap for self soothing.