Sleep

Sacha and I are tired. We've had a big last week, with her starting her new job and the steep learning curve that that has entailed. For me, it has been my first week of being on nearly round-the-clock baby duty. And Mateo, after several nights of going to sleep like magic at 7 pm, has decided that he no longer likes his new bedtime. He prefers to fuss for a few hours and then go to sleep more like 9:30 or 10.

It's not the bedtime itself that's getting us. If we knew he was just going to go down at 10 or any other time, it would be fine. It's the variability and the several hours of wind-up and fussing before bed that have been wearing us down. We can see him getting overtired and worked up but have a hard time helping him calm down. This process has effectively consumed our last several evenings.

I know this is all part of having an infant join our family! Still, I'm looking forward to that day in the far-distant future when going to bed and sleeping through the night are more normal again. Considering that we want to have another baby at some point, this may really be FAR in the distant future :)

However, some things are improving. After he finally went down last night, he slept from 9 pm to 5 am! It was amazing. He woke up once and needed to be reswaddled, but went right back to sleep and that was that. It was great. I was telling Sacha that if we both didn't have colds (courtesy of her kindergarten class), I bet we would have felt like a million bucks this morning.

In other news, we've had a really nice V Day. Sacha brought home enough chocolate (gifts from her class) to build our house a new foundation and we are in the process of trying to decide what to do with it. Seriously - almost every kid brought her a huge box of something. Apparently, this is a perk of being an elementary school teacher! She reports that teaching middle school was nothing like this on Valentine's Day.

After she got home, I decided that having some time for us as a couple was more important than going to my Spanish class, so I stayed home and we cooked and had a nice time catching up. Mateo even consented to spend a little time in his swing so that his moms could actually eat dinner at the same time!

As I noted a few days ago, we got our first clearly positive pregnancy test on Valentine's Day last year. I am still amazed at how far we have come since then. On at least a weekly, if not daily, basis, I look at Mateo and still can't believe that we actually managed to have a child. And such a great one at that. He such a fun little guy to be around, even when he's fussing.

Speaking of that, said child is currently crying his little heart out, so I'd better go and walk him around this block and pray that he falls asleep soon!

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Edited to add: The walk worked like a charm! I may have to try that again. He conked right out and is now happily asleep in his co-sleeper. Wahoo!