Progress!!!! PROGRESS!!!

We are making progress! Sleep progress! I want to shout it from the roof, which I might be tempted to do, except for the snow and ice. But still.

P. R. O. G. R. E. S. S.

I know I sound excited. And rested. Because I am. I also know we probably could have been excited and rested before if we had just done what everyone told us to do... and let her cry (with comfort at intervals). But I couldn't do it. I tried. And I couldn't do it. I did, however, start making changes to our routine (mostly at nap time). Those changes helped (thank you Elizabeth Pantley, author of the No-Cry Sleep Solution) but our first sleep plan didn't quite get us over the hump.

Enter tired Aaron. He said we had to do something different. Let her cry if we needed to, but do something different. So we thought about it, argued about it, talked about it, and made another plan (using another suggestion from Ms. Pantley). Since Ava was waking to nurse at night (a lot) we thought we needed to stop that. If I tried to comfort her without nursing, she went ballistic. Soooo... we decided to try Aaron comforting her at night. He would go in and hold her, rock her, do whatever he could to make her sleep and put her down.. just no nursing. Bingo. No nursing, no crying, no waking. The changes we had made at nap time allowed her to fall asleep quickly (without a lot of fussing/crying) and since she couldn't see me, she didn't want to nurse. We haven't had total success yet, but we are definitely seeing progress. After two nights of our new plan, Aaron just has to go in and pat her on the back if she stirs. We are hoping to eliminate that step next. So we are getting there! Which is good. Very, very good.

In non-sleep news, Ava hates Santa. Really. She hates him. We have photographic evidence of her dislike. I figure this will change when she figures out it is his name on her shiny new boxes under the tree. The boxes are way cooler than the contents anyway.

Ava is now crawling (forwards!). The backwards crawling was very frustrating for her, but it was sure easier for us. She can also go from her belly to sitting up. We have to baby-proof the house. Hard to believe 8 months have gone by.

Here are some new photos!