Much ado about nothing

Remember how we were going to remind Thomas that sleeping through the night gets you in the cool kids club? And he better do it right now.

This was the week. And I prepared for the worst.

We didn't start last week because it was a bit of a busy weekend and I couldn't handle any kind of lack of sleep. Also because I needed to have a good book to read if I was going to be up all night.

I finally talked Josh into it and convinced him that babies who are 5 months old will not die of starvation if they don't wake up to eat during the night. *You should know that this is no small victory. It took days, loads of conversation and a bit of internet-based research to get him on my team.


Sunday night approached and I prepared myself. (If the picture in your head doesn't have to do with me in war paint and football pads, you're not seeing it right.) I armed myself with my "mean mom" face. We'd feed the child carrots, have a bath, a bottle, a story and off. to. bed!

I wasn't going to let him out of that crib until 8am. Not for all the tea in China (or even for something cooler that I actually want.....like this totally awesome food scale). I was prepared to sob while listening to his innocent cries and I was relatively certain that at some point I'd have to tackle Josh in the hallway before he got to the child and comforted him and ruined all of my hard work.

Somehow in psyching myself up for this grand adventure, I totally forgot that putting Thomas to bed is easy. (It's the letting him cry in the middle of the night instead of feeding him I needed to prepare for.)

Food, bath, bottle, story, bed. The end. No crying, no sobbing, no war paint, nothing. A bit anti-climactic if you ask me.

Josh woke him up to "dream feed" him one more time at 10 (to appease his "don't starve the child" instinct) after which Thomas cried for nearly 2 minutes and we didn't hear from him again until 8am.

Seriously.

Last night was the first time he woke up before "morning" (As the morning-time-nazi I have deemed anything prior to 8am "the middle of the night" and will not allow any perky behavior during these hours. Josh is not so great at complying.) and I let him cry for like an hour (checking on him every 30 minutes and sleeping in-between) and he fell back to sleep and slept until 8 again.

I could've saved my war paint for something much more exciting. Like our nertz tournament this weekend. Or the chick-flick vs shoot-em-up-kill-em-dead battle. Even the "what's for dinner" discussion* would've been more suited to war paint.

*The "What's for dinner" discussion goes like this:
Josh: Hey babe, what delicious food did you make me for dinner?  
Me: I didn't make anything. We probably have leftovers. Or we could have pasta again.
Josh: OK. Sounds great.