A Retraction and an Explosion

We have some friends whose children are wonderful sleepers. They go to bed at 6:30 or 7:00 every night, and don't get up until 8:00 or 8:30. They will sometimes protest for a minute or so but once their bedroom door is closed, they are quiet and go to sleep. They have done this for almost their entire lives. One of them is now three years old and the other is one and a half. Naturally, these are the friends that we went to for advice about babies and sleeping.

Following their method, we began training Asher to go to bed early at night when he was six weeks old. We were very successful and now put him down confidently at a relatively early hour every evening. As I stated in my previous post, I intended to start training him to take his naps consistently and in his bed when he reached two months. I started on Monday. The plan was to put him down for each of his naps (at this point, he goes through four full feeding cycles during the day and would therefore take four naps) with a short nap-time ritual consisting of some soothing and a story. I would then allow him to cry for ten minutes before going in to soothe him for five, then I would allow him to cry for fifteen minutes the next time. I would not take him out of the room or let him be finished with his "nap" until the full nap time had passed.

This all sounds very good in theory. However, neither Asher nor I liked the practical application.  Overall, we managed to achieve more screaming than actual napping.  After three days of this torture (I'm pretty sure that it was almost as torturous for me as it was for him) I had seen very little success and no progress except with the first nap of the day, which he was pretty good at taking without training anyway.  Besides this, after a few napping sessions, Asher acted frantic even when I picked him up.  He also started crying when I set him down at other times just for a moment, even on our makeshift changing table.  He usually really likes to have his diaper changed and calms down or smiles as soon as we set him on the table for a change so this sudden switch to crying really disturbed me.  When Hugh got home from work this evening we decided that it was time to quit.  Our friends trained their children to nap this way, and they are very happy, well-adjusted children, but I was starting to feel like the meanest mommy in the world.  Maybe learning to go down for a nap by himself would be good for Asher and I am just a wimp, but there you have it.  So, in case anybody thought that I was an amazing sleep trainer after my last post, I learned this week that I am not.  

In other news, Asher had the biggest diaper explosion of his short little life today.  I was walking around with him outside (luckily), with my hand under his bottom to hold him up.  I felt him dirty his diaper and it was so sudden and explosive that I instinctively moved him away from my body (also luckily).  Besides filling his diaper, he also managed to get poop down his leg, all over my hand, and on the pavement.  For those who don't believe me, I have photographic proof.  Ah, the glamor of parenthood.

This is an actual photograph of the poop splat.  The main splat is approximately two inches in diameter, not including the accompanying peripheral splattage.

And a few more pictures, just for fun:

The smiling pictures are at funny angles that make his head look a little weird.  This is because as soon as he saw the camera he would stop smiling and stare at it in a very concentrated manner, so I had to get him to smile and then whip the camera out and snap a picture as quickly as possible.  This situation is caused by the male technology-obsession gene, which makes anybody with a Y chromosome incapable of thinking about anything else when a technological device of any kind is in view (except maybe for computerized sewing machines and bread makers).

He loves this zebra...almost as much as the elephants. :)

P.S.  Today I learned how to get pictures from the camera onto the computer, and then onto the blog all by myself.  This is mostly because Hugh was asleep on the couch at the time and only quasi-responsive when disturbed so he couldn't do it for me, but progress is progress.