Growing up too fast

This week something important had to take priority over blogging for me. Sleep. It has been a constant challenge with Zane and it reached a breaking point over the last few weeks. I have been getting less and less sleep as Zane continued waking up to 7 times a night (sometimes more) and I, in an effort to get work done (housework, school work, bills, blogging, etc), was staying up after his bed time and ended up really screwing up my sleep cycles. Not only has this been taking a toll on me, but Jim hasn’t been able to get enough sleep either. Something had to give. Since Zane is now over a year old and definitely showing signs of understanding a lot more I decided that now it was time to focus on more than just getting by with the sleep thing. At his one year doctor’s appointment on Tuesday his pediatrician said we had 3 choices:

1. keep limping along the way things are
2. let him cry a la Ferber method
3. let him cry while being present in his room but completely ignoring him

After agonizing over this decision and once again reading everything my dry, blurry, red eyes could find on infant sleep problems I finally decided that Mommy knows better about day to day operations than authors or pediatricians (okay, I may be wrong here, but I’m the Mommy, so I’m the boss!). Anyway, I am dealing with the so-called “Sleep Training” in my own way. After 3 nights I am actually seeing some improvement. I’m not going to go into detail right now (mainly because I am writing at the moment instead of doing something way more important… sleeping!!). All I can ask is that if you’re out there reading this, please say a prayer to whatever higher power in which you believe (or just send me some good luck vibes if there is no higher power for you) that Zane, and therefore our whole family, will start sleeping better and I won’t have to resort to something that every single ounce of my being tells me is the wrong thing to do for my child.

Okay, enough about the sleep thing. I hope in a few days I can report success, but it’s still way too early to tell.

Let’s talk about something much more exciting: Zane is officially walking now! On Wednesday evening instead of simply taking steps from Jim to me or vice versa I set him down and he walked AWAY from me, down the hall, and sat down looking totally satisfied with himself. Yes, we are indeed in for some tremendous changes in the coming days (and let’s hope we’ll be well rested enough to deal with them!).

In other developmental milestone news, Zane has starting trying to put things together instead of just tearing things apart. He still favors the latter, as evidenced by the mayhem he leaves in his wake throughout every room of our house, but it’s a start! Oh, and he’s showing that he recognized a lot more and retains a lot more just in the last couple of weeks. Over the weekend when Uncle Jeff was visiting he pointed right at him the first time someone mentioned Uncle Jeff to him, and he doesn’t see Jeff all that often. Same thing with Ryan last night. It was really cool to see that he’s developing a more sophisticated view of his world and the people in it.

A few other topics I wanted to touch on briefly since what I really ought to be doing is sleeping (duh, Gigi, quit spewing useless jargon and get thee to bed!!):

• Birthday party - it ROCKED!! Thanks to everyone who came and I hope I can write about it more later
• Did I mention yet how I’ve discovered I work better in coffee shops that offer unlimited refills and free wireless access? I have two new favorite “offices”!
• CNC is about to start so I’m going to have the pleasure of driving home four hours alone with Zane in the car and noone else to witness me plummeting into the depths of screaming infant induced insanity.
• The blog isn’t the only thing suffering due to my focus on sleep. My whole HUGE bathtub (my bathtub rocks… it’s huge and has armrests!) is full of crumpled clean clothes waiting to be folded and put away. Hey, at least they are clean!
• In the midst of all this sleep deprivation I have somehow managed to continue my training, although not to the extent I would prefer. I ran twice this week and swam once. But hey, that’s more than I slept ;-).
• The most wonderful sound in the entire world is the sound my son makes when he sleeps. His breathing and the occasional coo or lip smacking or sigh. It is amazing the strength of the love I feel for this perfect little creature!