Evan is a sweetheart.
8 months
Today I was standing in line at Starbuck's, and I was holding Evan up so his little butt was resting on my shoulder/chest. He was looking straight ahead with his thumb plugged in. I wanted to get his attention, so I made a kissing noise in his direction, and he leaned down close to me so that his cheek was right in front of my face! I then kissed his cheek and he returned to his original position.
Our boy loves kisses.

Sleep update
I just can't get over it. Ever since sleep training, he takes forever to fall asleep! It used to take 3-15 minutes (usually 3), but now it takes at least a half-hour. The rest of the night is starting to get better though. He is still waking up frequently, but I'm not sure how often because when he sleeps next to me, I don't fully wake up to attend to him. My point of view now is to chill out and assume that he is in a weird phase and he'll grow out of it. Eventually.

Thanks to everyone for your comments! We love comments. Especially when they're really nice and supportive.

the last few nights...
So on night #5 (Monday night), Jerry and I were both exhausted at 8:00 pm. That's right -- 8PM! Coming from two people who hate to miss the late show, we were dismayed we couldn't keep our eyes open past the evening news. Usually Jerry will volunteer for the first shift or I will, depending on the previous night, but I could tell the system was going to break down that night.

So after Evan woke up at 10:00, we took him to bed with us, and allelujah, it was the most peaceful, restful night EVER, like we were sleeping on clouds. And we tried to remember why we didn't like co-sleeping in the first place... our goal was any sleeping arrangement that produced peace and happiness in this household, and we couldn't remember what the problem was.

Then on night #6, we again took him to bed with us after the first night waking, and it was fitful. He woke up frequently, and when he did, his comfort technique was pulling my hair. I would take it away from him, he would cry. I would comfort him by patting, he would stick his fingers up my nose. I would remove them, he would cry. This went on all night. Oh, he also loves to crawl on top of me when he wakes up. He does it with a big smile on his face. It's like his way of saying that he's really, really glad I am there next to him, and it's very sweet, but.....

We're trying yet another new thing tonight. Will post progress soon. We definitely will not let him cry it out again, and we will keep him in the crib for the beginning of the night and go from there. We will try different ideas, but they will be gentler ones than what we used before.

Last night, oh my goodness
So we're still plugging away. Last night was the worst yet and we had to make concessions in order to get him to sleep. We're still optimistic. We know that sometimes you have to endure some hardship in order to make something work. He's a good boy and it will all work out in the end.

In an effort to keep him occupied while in the crib I bought him yet another "soother." He has so much hardware in his crib now it's as if he's sleeping in the cockpit of a jet fighter. Call the boy Iceman. He now has the Leapfrog soother and it really is a keen piece of machinery. Under different circumstances I'd say it is the best toy ever. It has great lullabies, tells stories and has a wonderful nightlight that screens little baby sheep for Evan to count, all of which he shows absolutely no interest. I think the best nighttime soother would be one that at the slightest peep emits a sleep-inducing gas. The gas would be baby powder scented.

Better yet, bubblegum scented.

A non-sleep Evan story
8 months
First, he let me read him three (3) books last night! Usually all he wants to do is chew the corners. He sat on my lap and let me read to him, looking carefully at the pictures, hitting the hard cardboard pages with his chubby hand, and saying, "ahhh, ahhhh, ahhh, ahhh" over me while I read, later changing it to, "eeee, eeeee, eeeee..."
He also helped me turn the pages, which he has never done before. One of his books has little 'doors' that you flip open (like you flip open the door to the chicken coop and find a chicken inside). After I would open the flap, he would wait for me to finish reading, then he would immediately close it.

Night Log #3
Successes: He again slept in his own room all night. When he woke up, he was MUCH easier to get back to sleep. Often I could pat him back to sleep, instead of having to pick him up and rock him. We think he's getting used to his crib and being away from us.
Challenges: We ran errands all day Saturday, so he never really had good naps. As a result, he was frazzled at bedtime and hard to calm down initially. I guess it's true what they say that sleep begets sleep.
Last night's Stats:
Time to put down in crib: 1 hour... too frazzled from lack of naps to fall asleep.
Longest sleep stretch:3 hours
# of total night wakings: 5
Time to get him back to sleep each time (average): 6 minutes! Big improvement from 1 hour last night.
Number of feedings: 2

Night Log #2
Successes: He slept in his own room all night. He was happy during his nighttime routine, not crying as nighttime came closer.
Challenges: Still woke up frequently and took forever to get back to sleep. He will calm down in the crib but as soon as we remove our hand from his body, he tends to wake up. He doesn't want to sleep alone.
Last night's Stats:
Time to put down in crib: 30 mins (half the time from last night)
Longest sleep stretch: 4 1/2 hours
# of total night wakings: 3 (down from 5 last night)
Time to get him back to sleep each time (average): 1 hour. At one point, he woke up at 1:00 and didn't fall back asleep until 3:30. He then woke up at 4:30 and took 5 minutes to get back to sleep. He then woke up at 5:30 and took 30 minutes to get back to sleep. This is much worse than last night! In fact, he had fewer night wakings tonight only because he spent more of his time awake than asleep.
Number of feedings: 3 (I gave in when desperate to get him to sleep).

Despite these very sad numbers, we still feel like we're moving in the right direction as he gets used to his crib and sleeping alone. One thing that was a major improvement over past nights: there were a few times Jerry and I were able to get him to sleep by just patting him in his crib (instead of picking him up) and he would fall asleep sucking his thumb while one of us patted him. However, when we gently moved our hand away, he would often startle awake and start crying. So he still wants to sleep with human contact (who doesn't?). It's a mystery why he was awake from 1:00-3:30 though. It seems like once he gets upset, he's hard to calm down. He just didn't want us to leave him in his crib. We persisted though.

Square one
So here's our new goal: Get Evan to sleep in his own room in his own bed all night long, regardless of how we get him to sleep. We can rock him to sleep, pat him, whatever. Later we will work on getting him to soothe himself to sleep so he's less dependant on us. We feel we were expecting him to do everything at once (stop the night feeding, sleep on his own, soothe himself to sleep, sleep through the night). Now we will focus on this one goal: Evan in his own room.

Last night we had the same problem with the night routine as the previous night, since starting cry-it-out: during the usually-happy bathtime, Evan cried. He cried louder when being changed into his jammies. He dreaded going to bed, dreaded the crib. He hated the last two nights being made to cry it out and now he has a negative association with sleeping. When Jerry rocked him, instead of it taking the usual 3 minutes for Evan to fall asleep and go down, it took 1 hour. Every time he would start to fall asleep, Jerry would move him slightly, and Evan would immediately open his eyes and start crying. Since using cry it out, things are worse. So we are starting over at square one. We need him to have a good association with his crib and room, then we'll work on the other stuff.

Night Log #1
Sleeping in his own room
Successes: He slept in his own room all night. He breastfed only twice.
Challenges: Still waking frequently, harder to get to sleep, afraid of the crib.
Last night's Stats:
Time required to put him to sleep: 1 hour
Longest sleep stretch:3 hours
Number of total night wakings: 5
Time required to get him back to sleep each time (average): 20 mins
Number of feedings: 2

Typical co-sleeping night (before starting any sleep training):
Time required to put him to sleep (average): 3 mins.
Number of total night wakings (average): 5-7
Time required to get him back to sleep each time (average): 10 mins
Number of feedings (average): 5

So some things are better, some are worse. Overall, I think we're heading in the right direction. It was only the first night with this system. We're going to do the same thing for one week before we try to expect anything new from him.

Sorry if these recent postings are too technical and boring. We feel like it helps keep us on track to post our progress. At some point we'll be happy and rested and fun to be around again. For now, forgive us and stick with us! :)

Tweak
Like Andrea said, I don't think this is working. But we have to keep focused on the goal of Evan sleeping through the night in his crib without waking. I think he's not been properly introduced to what we expect of him. From his point of view we're ignoring him while he wants to go to sleep. It may not be dawning upon him to lay down on his own in the crib so here is the tweak. I will rock him to sleep at first and put him in his crib. When he wakes we will rock him again and put him back into his crib. This may be more labor for us, but I think over time and with consistency he will get the jist of what we're trying to accomplish. So the step after that would be putting him in his crib while he's still awake and letting him figure out how to put himself to sleep.

Not all babies can be "Ferberized" that is, not all kids take to the cry it out method. The fact that he is screaming with the same verve and vigor at 2am after six hours of screaming says to me this kids got spunk. And I like that about the little man. So what can we do but adapt, improvise and be compassionate to this unique little person.

The upside is that he only breastfed once and he spent 2 nights in his crib now. I think we're moving in the right direction, we've just not seen the results we had hoped. I sympathise with all you parents who did this cry it out thing and had to endure your child screaming for over an hour. We've had to endure over 13 hours of him screaming. That is no good for anybody involved. Time to move on. We'll still post his progress. Stay tuned.

Night Log #2
This isn't working.
Jerry started the usual nighttime routine a little earlier (30 minutes) because Evan was so tired. Sadly, Evan cried throughout the whole routine, which is very unusual for him. He cried during dinner, cried during bath, and started screaming as we put his jammies on him. He seemed to dread sleep.

All day today he was extra clingy. He wouldn't even play with toys by himself. He freaked out whenever I left his side for a minute. Poor thing is worried I'll abandon him.

Jerry put him down at 7:30. He stayed asleep for a whopping 45 minutes. He then woke up at 8:15. I went in to pat him every 5, then 10, then 15, then 20 minutes, revisiting him every 20 minutes until he fell asleep 2 hours later at 10:10. That lasted another 45 miutes. I then comforted him every 20 minutes again... it is now 2:15 am, he is still wide awake and screaming with the same gusto he had earlier. No signs of sleep. This seems so unnatural to me.

I think this method is over.

Night #1: Night Log
Is this how it's supposed to work?
10:10 - Jerry put him down still awake at 8:00, he cried for 2 hours with Jerry checking on him every 20-30 minutes. He thought it didn't make sense to check on him every 10 minutes because he would just get more upset when he saw Jerry, and we thought that would draw the whole process out. At 10:10, the boy was so frazzled and we felt so sorry for him, that Jerry rocked him and then put him down. We then wondered if that meant the last 2 hours were a waste, like we'd just taught Evan all he has to do is cry long enough and we'll rock him, which is one of the habits we were trying to break.

2:10 - Evan wakes up for the first time. I think this is good, because he slept for 4 hours, which is an improvement from before. I breastfed him, put him down, patted him, and left. He fussed/cried, though not as loud as before.

2:30 - Still crying. Standing in his crib when I went in. I lied him down, patted him, said some kind words, and left.

3:00 - Still crying. Did the same as above. Tried to sing to him but he screamed over me.

3:32 - I got up to go comfort him again, but he fell asleep before I could get there. Success! It worked! The 1 1/2 hours of crying was brutal for everyone involved, but it is an improvement from the 2 hours of crying earlier. Plus, he fell asleep without being rocked.

But then...

3:43 (11 minutes later) - he woke up. Started fussing. This went on until 5:30 am (3 1/2 hours total crying, with us reassuring him every 30 mins) when Jerry went in and rocked him to sleep. He slept from 5:30 - 7:00.

Total hours of sleep for Evan = 5 1/2
Total hours of crying (for Evan) = 5 1/2

I feel this was not a success. Is it possible this method just won't work for him? It was only night #1, so I suppose we should try again, though I am already ready to give up. Something that makes me feel this sick can't be right. On the other hand, everyone I know who has used cry it out says it's hard at first, then it works. So I suppose I should stick with it.

Complete Failure
10:10. He screamed for 2 hours straight. The boy needs to sleep. I went in there and picked him up. He was sweaty and frantic and he fell asleep in my arms in less than 2 minutes. I'm sure he'll be awake in a couple hours and we can start this all over again.

Tip: Trust that you when enough is enough.

Night 1: 9:07pm
He's still screaming. It's been an hour and he's still screaming.

In preparation for this task we moved his room to the back bedroom, furthest away from us and the noise of the front room. Andrea went downstairs to warn the girls who live below us that Evan could be screaming all night, but I doubt they can hear anything over the thump thump thump of the Hoobastank cd they have on repeat.

So it is a bit easier than before because we can't hear him so much. When his room was up front we heard every whimper, sneeze, and fart, but now he's raising the dead back there and I'm able to type.

Tip 1: put some distance between the kid and yourself.

He screams pretty good when he's alone, but screams three times as loud after I visit to "reassure" him. I think I'm gonna let him alone. He's my little man and I know he'll be ok.

(Evan, when you get older and read this, know that we love you and its breaking our hearts to hear you scream like this. Depending on how old you are when you read this, Evan, remind me to give you a lolly/ice cream/video game/keys to my car/advice on 401k.)

Tip 2: Remind yourself that he'll be ok and tomorrow morning he'll give you a hug and act like none of this happened.

Its 9:20 now and it gets intermittantly quiet and screamy in his room. Is he running out of steam?

The no-win situation
Jerry's right... we swore we would never let Evan "cry it out." We liked the Sears' parenting philosophy that was focused on co-sleeping, breastfeeding, and responding promptly to baby's cries. The goal of this philosophy is to build trust with your baby. The cry-it-out method contradicts this philosophy, but what we're doing is no longer working.

Evan isn't doing anything wrong, we have just failed to train him. It seems that some babies sleep great without any training, and I'm in awe of those babies and parents (and maybe a little jealous), but that's not us. Evan is now 8 months old, and he wakes up every 1-3 hours all night long, and needs to either be patted or rocked or breastfed back to sleep. As a newborn he awakened frequently, but when he brought him to bed with us, things improved drastically. Now they have taken a turn for the worse. Now, instead of quietly waking up and letting us know he's hungry or whatever, he awakes by screaming. He also wakes up more often than he did as a five-month old.

The last three months have been horrible. We thought he would outgrow this night waking. At first we thought it was just teething, then a cold. Now, I hate to say it, but I think it's the co-sleeping. He's got his all-night kitchen right there next to him, so why sleep? It works for some people I know, but it isn't workin for us.

The method we'll use is putting him down, letting him cry for a few minutes, then going in and patting him and reassuring him, then leaving the room, and as Jerry says, "repeat." We'll never let him cry more than 5 minutes or so without reassuring him. Maybe 10 minutes if it comes to that. Do the same thing over and over and over again until he falls asleep. In theory, this is supposed to be hardest the first night and then get better. I've talked to parents who had babies who slept through the night by day 3 or day 5. I'll be happy if he sleeps better by the weekend. Give me a 5-hour sleep stretch and I'm buying everyone drinks.

We're terrible parents and we hate ourselves
We're going to implement the cry it out method starting tonight. This may or may not be a good idea. We are torn between heartbreak and anger over the current sleeping situation and the only thing holding us together is paralyzing anxiety. Something’s got to give.

Evan is a sweet boy. There is no denying that and we love him with all of our heart and then some, but the boy needs to sleep and he needs to sleep by himself in his crib all night long without waking. Period. Actually, we would love to co-sleep if he just would stop waking every hour on the hour with paint peeling screeches and clawing fingers. Those little baby fingernails are like razors and get a couple up the nose and that’s a frightful wake-up. So tonight we're going start to do the one thing we said we would never do and hope that it takes and it will be worth it and in the end he will still love us.

Basically, the cry it out method is putting your child in the crib and leaving the room. Let the child scream himself to exhaustion and eventually fall asleep. Repeat. The end result is the child reasons that the parents won't cater to his every whimper, scream or belch, therefore he must just lie down for a nice nap and start afresh in the morning.

Orrrrrrrrr

The child's will is broken and his sense of abandonment so consuming that his only survival technique is to shut down and go to sleep. Either way the parents are now free to do the things parents do when kids are asleep, which so far seems to be talking about the kid with each other, with family members, with friends, and with strangers on the street.

I know we have a lot to do with creating the situation we're in right now. After Evan came out of Special Care nursery, we didn't ever want to let go of him. We were very, very concerned about SIDS, and the fact the boy always wanted to sleep on his stomach compounded the issue. He was a very colicky baby and the only way he would get any rest is if I let him sleep on top of me. So all the way from when he came home through to the World Series he slept on my chest. Trust me, I didn't mind. Don't forget, we love having him close. Too clingy are we? Maybe, but don't be too judgmental. We're now correcting some of our early mistakes.

I know we're going out on a limb here, airing our laundry like this, but it feels right to talk about it. We've never been the ones to put a shiny veneer on our lives so why start now. I'm making these posts about our experience with cry it out because I know we aren't the only ones that feel like terrible people for resorting to this method. Hopefully somewhere along the line somebody in our position will come across this and gain a little comfort. So, this isn't a request for submissions from parents who never had a problem with their child sleeping. Congrats, but keep it to yourself. But if you have empathy for what we're going through, a story, an anecdote, or tip please get in touch with us. Also, please pass our site on to people who would be interested. I would love for these posts to get some serious airtime. We need the support and would love to support others.

Udates
I know, I know. We haven't been keeping this site fresh. We need to post more pictures and we need more wit and wisdom from the parental units. But man have we been overwhelmed the last few weeks. I've been working my tushy off and Andrea has been in a thesis daze for weeks. I promise, big changes are coming. I've spoken with many of the world's leaders and I assure you that they support me in updating this site more regularly. I can't name any of them, but take my word for it.

One thing I'm working on is setting up an image gallery that allows us to upload images on the fly. It will downsample and color correct and all kinds of good stuff. I just need to get it configured correctly on the site. Especially now that we have camera phones. We'll be able to snap and post on the fly. Good times for all of you who need your Evan boost.

Evan kissed his Eddie Bear last night all by himself. While Evan and I were saying goodnight to the lights I picked up Eddie to make him part of the nightime routine. Evan looked at him for a second then grabbed his ears in each hand and planted a big wet one on his nose. All without my prompting him. This is a first, for me at least. I never have seen anything so heart warming.

So, site redesign is coming, new galleries are coming, video is coming, new humorous yet touching commentary is on its way... y'all just need to do your part and keep coming by. And hey, give us some feedback. We'd love to hear from you.

Oh yeah, thanks for the calls and cards on my birthday. I love you all even if I haven't had a chance to get back to you.

affectionate and active!
almost 8 months
Evan is a little sweetheart. He is giving me lots of open-mouthed kisses. We play a game where I kiss a stuffed animal of his, complete with a loud kissing noise, then hand him the animal and he gives it an open-mouthed kiss (complete with an mmmmm noise). He also gives me big slobbery ones in between smiles. He's so cute and fun. I really didn't think I'd like being a parent this much.

It's funny because if a friend or anyone else woke me up this often at night, the relationship would be over. There would at least be strong, everlasting resentment. But as tired as we are, we love him so much. We're always happy to see his smiling face in the morning.

Evan and I have been sick since Sunday. Running fevers, sweating profusely, stuffy noses, body aches, back aches, and we're both very crabby and difficult to please. Oh, I hate being sick. We spent two days at home and we're still taking it easy, watching Barney and Baby Einstein and doing lots of sitting around.

Evan's favorite new things are: opening and closing drawers while putting his fingers dangerously close to the inside of the drawer, pulling himself up to the toilet, attempting to jump/crawl off the bed headfirst, eating leaves found on our carpet, pulling cords out of electrical outlets, knocking over lamps, playing with the fringe on our lamps, stuffing way too much into his mouth, pulling the kitty's whiskers and fur, and crawling headfirst into glass doors and other solid objects. We're working hard to keep him alive and not crying.

Jerry decided it was time to graduate Evan from his baby bath to the big adult bath. Evan was constantly standing up in his baby bath and trying to escape. The water was barely covering him. Jerry figured he can't escape as easily from the adult bath. So he bought a non-skid thing for the bottom of our tub and some floating bath toys and gave him a big kid bath last night. When I peeked in, Evan was crawling around the bathtub, which made me a little nervous, but Jerry had a close eye on him. He loves his baths!

He's now drinking from a sippy cup (with assistance; he still refuses the bottle), eating Cheerios and baby cookies, drinking juice, and occassionally sampling what we're eating (which we aren't supposed to do, but it's hard to say no when his mouth is hanging open, he's salivating, and leaning into whatever we're eating). Turns out he loves orange juice, pears and the peach/mango smoothie from Jamba Juice.

He is no longer saying MaMa. That lasted about 2 days. He's babbling with different consonants now. Sometimes he says dadada. Sometimes oogaya. Sometimes maga. Sometimes he just spits and blows bubbles with his spit.