Well last night was pretty wierd and very encouraging. I put The Daughter to bed at 7:30 then finished working, climbed in bed and skimmed through Kids, Parents & Power Struggles and Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline just to refresh in my mind how to work better with The Son. Although I know it is mostly sleep deprivation causing me to lose sight of the correct words to use, I did find the latter half of ELDD interesting because it talks about typical behaviours at different ages and The Son is doing all of the four-year-old stuff. At least I know this is normal and not a reaction to my horrible state at the moment.

Anyway, I went to bed and fell fast asleep by 9pm. The Daughter woke at 11pm and I chose to nurse her (my "deal" is that I will nurse her before 11 but not after until the sun comes up). I've been waking her up at 10:30 so I figured 11 was just her responding to those feedings. I fell asleep with her and the next time I woke up it was 2:42. I woke to her sitting up and laying ontop of me, putting her head on my shoulder. She knew what was happening and she tried so hard to put herself to sleep. She changed positions, she really tried and finally about 15 minutes later she was back fast asleep. Unfortunately, I wasn't. My body was reeling from getting those 3.5 hours of sleep!!!!!! It's horrible to want to sleep and yet not be able to. At some point I fell back asleep. The Daughter woke again at 4:14 and we snuggled and she fell back asleep. Then again at 5:30 at which point I nursed her because it was light out. No crying, in fact, no noise at all and an obvious attempt on her part to really fall asleep on her own.

So, it was encouraging. I never thought I'd hear myself say that 3.5 hours is a heck of a long time to sleep but I feel better today... imagine how my life would change with like 5 hours of sleep! Consistently! We can get there...I know we can.