Up All Night

Ethan seems to have discovered after the weekend that if he gets up in the middle of the night, it's party time alone with Mommy and Daddy. We stayed at my sister's on Sunday night and Ethan and Nathanial had a hard time getting to sleep. More because they didn't feel good than anything else, I think. Ethan was starting to settle down, but decided it was much more fun to just stay awake, so he took forever to get down. Every single night since then, he has decided that he needs to wake up any time between 10 - 12 and he tries to stay up! Monday night, Nathanial had a very rough night because he couldn't breath through his nose and the only way he could figure out how to breath through his mouth was to cry. So he ended up sleeping with me all night, while Steve slept on the couch. He would exhaust himself from crying, sleep for an hour, then be back up. It was a very long night, especially since I was also sick. Steve was up with Ethan from 12 -2, but not because he wasn't feeling well, just because he wanted to party. He finally just put him down in his crib and Ethan went to sleep. Imagine that! Tuesday night, he got up around 9:00, so I stupidly took him downstairs since it was still "early." Big mistake, he was back up at 12:30, so Steve got up with him, he was up 30 minutes, then he put him down and out he went. Last night, he woke up at 10:30 and I took him into our room for a little while (Fred Thompson was on Leno, I didn't want to miss it!) then took him back to his room. He got upset very quickly when I laid him down, so I went back in after about 30 seconds and rocked him for a little bit. He tried smiling at me, talking to me, touching my face, anything to get my attention. It was very difficult to not interact with him, but I knew I couldn't. We rocked for about five minutes, then I laid him down and he went back to sleep. Now I know, we shouldn't even give in to these little midnight visits, but it is very difficult not to and I cannot listen to my kids cry...it breaks my heart. So I guess if he wants to be up for a few minutes, I'll keep letting him. At least now I know to limit our visit to the rocking chair and try to ignore him!