sleep update

At the risk of boring my readers, but in the interest of documentation, I just want to quickly update the sleep situation: since we got back from Ithaca, Valerie has only been waking up 2-3 times at night. The biggest change we made was to sleep on the floor in our dining room/office. She is now sleeping in our bedroom by herself. The routine that is working well is as follows:

1. The usual bedtime ritual (put away toys, play lullaby CD, bath, pajamas, books), starting around 7:30 p.m.
2. When she is done with the books, she turns towards me and head-butts me in the chest. That is my cue to turn off the light and nurse her.
3. I nurse her until she throws herself back with a stretch and a sigh. That is my cue she is done.
4. I say "time to sleep in your own little bed" and lay her down in the pack-n-play (Terry thought it felt cozier that the crib at this point)
5. She rolls over and goes to sleep, sometime around 8:00 p.m.

Sometimes she gets up and wants another cuddle or to nurse just another minute or two, but from #2-#5 has not taken any longer than 10 minutes since we got back Sunday night. I say 4 nights in a row constitutes a pattern.

The other regularity in the past four nights is that she'll sleep for three hours, then wake up and cry. Terry and only Terry goes in to soothe her back down. This can take from 30 minutes to an hour with varying amounts of crying. He gives her water but not milk. She may wake up one more time 2 hours later, but 2 nights she hasn't, and has slept through until morning.

Between 6 and 7 she wakes up hungry and I nurse her (only on one side, so no more overfeeding to the point of throwing up). We might get another 30-40 minutes' sleep (her, not me) in the lazy boy. When she starts sitting up and cooing/babbling, I figure it's morning and I turn on the lights and open the curtains and we play. At that point Terry goes into the bedroom for another quick sleep until he has to get up for work.

Since I've stopped being the nap nazi, I wait until she's good and ready to go down. Today she was up at about 6:15, and just went down for her nap 4 hours later.

Once we really solidly establish a good night's sleep, we want to move her bedroom upstairs so we can reclaim our room downstairs.