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Tuesday, December 11, 2007

The Parent Check

For a while Rachel was rather "sensitive" about being left alone. Apparently she's over that now because she's fine in her crib all through the night, but before she'd wake up pretty much every half hour--it was brutal. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have the baby in bed with me than be woken up every half hour with her wailing in the next room. Call me crazy.

So Rachel's been sleeping in our bed. I would go in and lie down with her while she fell asleep or until she was almost asleep and then leave her while I finished up some of my business for the day. Who am I kidding...I still often do that.

I put pillows all around her so that she can't roll out of bed and then sneak off quietly down the hall.

She's been better about sleeping by herself but she used to have this signature move that Andrew named "the Parent Check." From a deep sleep her eyes will crack open. She'll desperately look left, look right, look left, look right, just to see if mom and dad are really there. Then she'll fall immediately back to sleep after grabbing our finger or arm or shirt or hair--something, anything to assure her that we haven't abandoned her.

It was really rather humorous. Sometimes we were able to fool her with pillows. As you can see in the picture below, she performed "the Parent Check" before Andrew and I went to bed. She grabbed onto the pillows on either side of her for comfort. Apparently they pass for parents.

Rachel's method of taking up the whole entire bed
She still likes to grab onto things while she sleeps, so we always make sure to give her a stuffed toy when we put her to bed alone. Hopefully that will be all she needs for a while--she's a hard person to sleep with. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle all night long!

I guess I deserve it. I slept with my mom until kindergarten--when I heard her talking to a fellow student's mom about how I still wouldn't sleep in my own bed. I was mortified; how embarrassing!

7 comments:

  1. Hah!! Wait until Rachel reads all about her sleeping and pooping--or has people comment on reading about her in your blog. Payback time--she will have a chance to be mortified!

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  2. I love that picture, it is so hilarious! I was rather a softy when it came to putting Maya to sleep. She needed me in her room to help her fall asleep. SO I would sing and sing and sing. For a little while, back in Utah, she fell asleep on her own. But now, with how our apartment is here, she is so used to sleeping with us in the same room. I think it may be awhile before she sleeps on her own in her own room!

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  3. I love the picture too. And how the pillows count as parents. LOL. Amy sometimes does a binkie check similar to the parent check. She'll open her eyes and frantically look around. As soon as I can get the binkie back in, right back to sleep for Amy. But if I am not around to reinsert the binkie, she might get frantic and wake herself up. That's sad because you want to get the most possible out of nap time. After putting Amy to bed tonight I snuck back into the bedroom to get any stray dirty laundry to put in the washer. While I was there she cried out in her sleep. I don't think she woke herself up at all, but she sure startled me. Little trickster.

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  4. and your next youngest sibling is, let me guess-- as much younger than you are as you were old when you heard your mum discussing you sleeping habits? ;)

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  5. Hahahaha. Miriam slept with us for the first year and her favorite "Parent Check" was to bore her head into our backs (she always ended up horizontal somehow). You know what the nicest thing was? Those huge beds they have in Jordan (did you ever see one of those?). There was room for us all in that ultra-king-sized bed.

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  6. That's Rachel's other method of taking up the whole bed.

    And yes--our bed in Jordan was a square--it took us a while to figure out how to make it. It was SO big!

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  7. Everyone has to do what they have to do to get a good nights sleep. For us having Grace in our bed equals a bad nights sleep. Since she was itty bitty she would take up most of the bed, pull hair, scratch and for some reason she thinks that if she is in bed with us she needs to stay up and will continue to try and play and engage us even if it is three in the morning. So in the interest of sanity baby Grace gets the boot even on nights when Ezra is sleeping with us :)

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