Yawning...

...is pretty much all I've been doing for the past two weeks! Remember our wonderful sleeper who sleeps 11 hours a night? He is definitely not here anymore. We aren't quite sure what the issue is yet--there are so many possibilites. He could be teething, grieving, attaching, adjusting, hungry, cold, or just have trouble going back to sleep since we always rock/sing him to sleep. We've ruled out a few of the above, but we still don't have any clear answers. There are nights when he wakes up five times crying, but goes back to sleep after we pick him up and comfort him. There are nights (mornings?) when he wakes up at 4:30 or 5:30 when his normal wake up time is 8:00. There are nights when he wakes up four times and then stays awake for two hours in the middle of the night. And there are nights when Mama doesn't know how she will survive! I don't deal well with sleep deprivation at all. And doesn't it just figure that during the night of "Daddy Duty" Joel didn't wake up once?

We are hoping that this is a phase and Joel will return to his great sleeping habits. We feel bad for our little one, who is clearly unhappy about something. It's so hard to hear him crying and not know exactly why. We are doing some reading and research in hopes that we can try something new that might help. We also know that we have to start weaning him off of putting him to sleep. He hasn't fallen asleep once on his own since he came home, and that could be part of the problem. We've definitely tried putting him down and just sitting there or leaving him in his crib, but he has too much fun! He walks all around the inside, yells, laughs, plays with the crib bumper...there's no way he will go to sleep that way! It's something we're working on, for sure.

In the meantime, we are enjoying his cuteness and sweetness as much as possible, because how else would we survive those nights and mornings?