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1.09.2013

My Sleeping Beauty

If you've been around my blog for a while then you know how hard of a time we had with Boogie when it came to naps and sleeping. I was adamant from the beginning that we would never allow her to cry it out or leave her if she needed comfort. I guess you could say we practice attachment parenting in that, and really many other aspects of parenting. You read everywhere how children will never learn to self soothe if you don't let them CIO, well I'm here to say that I have proven those naysayers WRONG. We have always comforted Boogie, held her, rocked her, nursed her, loved on her, sat with her... did whatever we could to ensure that she knew we were there for her as she fell asleep. My daughter turned 2 a few weeks ago and she is officially putting herself to sleep without us in the room with her. She does whine and sometimes pitches a fit (mainly during naptime), but she doesn't cry out of discomfort or fear. She lays down, squeezes her Ocean Wonders Soothe and Glow Seahorse so that it lights up and plays music, pulls her blanket up to her chin and lays there until she falls asleep. Granted, there are evenings when she is ornery and sneaks out of bed to play, or sits up in her bed saying, "Mommy. Daddy. Mommy. Daddy. Water? Hungry!" She's figured out how to stretch her awake time as long as possible, but lucky for us we're just a wee bit smarter, lol. On average it takes her about 15-20 minutes to fall asleep. So there. I'm sticking my tongue out at all of these professionals who swear up and down that CIO is the only way to go. We do sit with her or hold her when she is genuinely upset, like last week when she wasn't feeling well. But other than that kind of instance, she's on her own. My independent 2 year old. How did that happen?



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