Sleep Associations - Part Two

I promise not to always give you a play by play of my child's sleeping habits, but I wanted to follow up my previous sleeping blog with an update -

This morning after falling asleep finally at 8 a.m., Eli slept for 2 hours. When he woke up, I fed him and we went for a long walk (and I persisted at not letting him fall asleep in the stroller, eventually carrying him for the last little bit so he wouldn't doze off... not an easy task with this 16-pounder), and at the advice of Dr. Andy, gave Eli a "snack" 30 minutes before it was time for his next nap. Then at 12:15, I started the process of changing his diaper, reading a few stories, singing a song, and quietly telling him it was time for his nap and putting him in the crib.

As soon as he was in the crib, Eli's eyes welled up with tears and went full blast into the "You are hurting my feelings!" cry. I left the room for about 10 minutes, went back in, and he was crying really hard. I pulled him out, put him on his tummy on the rug next to the crib, and got down on my tummy next to him. No toys, no fun, just something to wear him out a little more! Eventually he got sick of our boring tummy time and I held him, rocked him, read another book, sang another song, put him back down. More tears!

I left him for 10 more minutes, then went back in to calm him back down, and more tears. Finally on the last time that I went in, I remembered someone had given us one of those satiny/soft small square blankets, so I gave that to him, and he cuddled with it, shoved part of it in his mouth, and I put him back down in his crib. He fussed off and on for about 15 more minutes, but finally fell asleep. VICTORY!!!

I think that was the first time that he fell asleep in his crib, without being nursed to sleep first. It took an hour from the time I started, but I'm hoping tomorrow's efforts won't take AS long...??? Oh the joy of fixing my mistakes!