Goodnight Goodnight Sleepyhead

I read Clara a lot of books today. It took a lot of time to unpack her books and I was feeling bad that I have not read her a book in a long time. One of the books that I read Clara tonight was Goodnight Goodnight Sleepyhead that her grandparents gave her for Christmas. She was getting a little antsy through that one because I would not let her touch the pretty pages! The board books seem to be quite a hit. I think I will buy more of those for her.

Clara has been OK going to bed. We have been trying to make serious efforts to put her down awake so she knows how to fall asleep herself. Before we started doing this, we would rarely put her down in her crib unless she was completely out because she would pretty much cry in her crib once she realized that she was alone. I would say for the last month or so, we have been trying to get her to fall asleep on her own. She does really well in the mornings. That first nap always goes really well. But as the day goes on, she fights it a little more and more. This evening, I put her down at around 7:15. I pretty much know how it is going to go by her reaction when she hits the mattress. If she goes down and is OK, but then starts to complain after a second or two, she can pretty much calm herself down. But if I put her down and she is either already crying or starts crying hard as soon as I place her down, it pretty much is NOT going to work. That is what happened tonight. I wanted to see how she was going to do, so I listened to her for a while. She was unable to calm herself down. I went up there after a while and picked her up and sat with her in the glider. I fed her, but after she started BITING (my least favorite occurence), I held her and rocked her for a while. She seemed to enjoy looking around and at me. After I calmed her down, I placed her back in her crib and she finally fell asleep after 20 minutes or so.

Her latest crib toy is the aquarium. It took her about a day to figure out how to turn it on. It has lights, sounds and makes bubbles. It is sort of like a little TV in her crib. She seems to love it. It is pretty funny when she is sort of crying and when you put her down and turn on the crib, she turns her head towards it and you can see the crying pass from her face. It seems to be working! I should have tried it sooner but it did not occur to me where to put it in her crib until we went to NJ and I saw where Cherie had placed hers. I guess I never sat and thought about where it should go. At least now I know.