Crying It Out

I was getting tired of Reese staying up until 11pm because she needed to go to bed with me and I was not ready to go to bed. I needed the time to myself, she needed to go to bed earlier, and her dad wanted to sleep in his own bed again. We decided to try the crying it out and just put her in her bedroom, shut the door, and let Reese cry herself to sleep. I was totally against this theory, but it seemed to be the quickest method to get to our goal. After all, she is two and a half years old now, it does not seem as cruel as when she was younger.

The first night Reese cried and pounded on the door for about an hour until she gave up and went to sleep. I put her to bed on her Dora couch on the floor of her room. I made the mistake of going and getting her at 3:30am that first night. The second night, Reese cried for about 20 minutes before she gave up, but then cried, yelled, and pounded from 3-4:30am because that was the time that I went to get her the night before. I was okay with the crying and the pounding, but what pulled at my heartstrings was her calling to me, "Mommy, come Weesh, pleash!" (Mommy, come Reese, please!)

By the third night we seem to have the new routine down. Reese started to go to bed in her own bed instead of going to the Dora couch. She would cry and wave me bye bye and let me close the door to her room. She normally does not cry for more than 10 minutes and has gotten use to her new bedtime of 9pm. She gets about 11 hours of sleep, but does have a tendency to get up earlier now that she goes to bed earlier.

Tonight is the first night that she has not said anything about me turning out the lights. My, my, she is growing up!