Worth the wait!

It's been almost exactly a month since Ben moved into his new room.

Here's how things have been going:

1. He sleeps through the night about once a week, give or take. The heater seems to have a good effect, but its not the only factor. (He slept through Saturday night, and I slept from 11 p.m. to 7:50 a.m. Wahoo!) The other nights, he usually wakes between 2 and 4 a.m. Once as early as midnight and several times as late as 6 a.m. It's pretty awesome. I wonder how long it will be before I am able to sleep through the whole night again ... I also wonder how long it will be before I no longer feel like sleep is the most important coveted thing in my life. My husband gives me a hard time about still being obsessed with sleep now that Ben's been sleeping well for about a month, but I was sleep deprived for 21 months before that. I don't know how long it takes to build back such a huge deficit, but I know it hasn't happened yet. Yesterday, after sleeping in until 8 a.m. with that huge block of uninterrupted sleep (not that I still didn't wake up briefly a few times anyway) I also took a nap with Ben from 1 to 2:15 p.m. and went to bed at 11 p.m. AND, I was exhausted!

2. Ben doesn't seem to have an opinion about the bedframe vs. mattress on the floor. He needs a step stool to get up into bed, but that doesn't seem to bother him either. He doesn't sleep any better or worse on the raised bed than he did on the floor, although I think it's cuter, more comfortable and warmer. It also makes the whole room feel more open, more like a child's bedroom. Sadly though, last night at 1:30 a.m. Stephen heard a big thunk and soon Ben was in the hall crying. So he might have fallen out of bed. :-( Hopefully, it only takes the once before he learns not to do it again. The strange thing is, he's been sleeping on a tall bed for basically his whole life. We had our mattress on the floor for a few months when he was like 9 to 12 months old, but that was a whole year ago. He's been sleeping alone in tall beds since then (minus the time we had his mattress on the floor) and never fell out. Maybe its just that his bed is a twin instead of a queen ...

3. We're working on making his room look more attractive and inviting. We got some wooden letters and painted them orange. So now the wall says "B E N" and he likes to point at it. He's learned to recognize a capital B in almost any context because of this idea. Totally cheap too, about $2 a letter and $1.50 for the paint. Well, it worked out so well, that we went back to the crafty aisle and picked up some wooden stars. (Ben is currently obsessed with stars.) I painted them white (isn't that what color real stars are anyway? Certainly, they aren't yellow ...) and am outlining them in glow-in-the-dark puffy paint. It's time consuming so it might be awhile until I'm ready to put them up, but I'm sure he will love them. He loves having stars to say goodnight to and is always so sad when its cloudy and there aren't any outside. (Which is getting to be always, because its fall ...)

4. The dresser is still sitting there, brown and ugly. I kind of figured this would happen. Oh well. His bed is nice white kid furniture style and my mom saw how bad the dresser looked. Maybe she'll get us a better one.

5. Oh and uh, let's just say its been nice having our bedroom (and our privacy) back after all this time. I'm still a proponant of sleeping with babies, and will be definitely be doing it again with our next child, but I am very glad that there's going to be a decent break inbetween sleeping with Ben and sleeping with baby number #2. I also get a whole lot more backrubs than I used to. :-)


Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how everything has been turning out. I've even put him to bed all by myself a few times in this last week. I won't say that was fantastic, but I did it. More on that another time.