Sleep.

It’s been a tough subject around here the last few days. It went from some highs to some lows.

Fawkes and Phoenix have been sleeping through the night for a long time now. I can’t even remember how old they were when we didn’t have to get up to change them or give them a dream feed. That’s been great.

Griffin has been a different story.

Because we don’t have a separate room to put him in, Griffin slept in a bassinet by our bed until he was about six months old. Because of that, any time he woke up, Tristen would just roll over, grab him, and give him a snack.

Then, when he did get moved into the same room as his brothers, we worried about his crying waking them up, so we haven’t been at all good about letting him cry it out at all.

Most nights, Babiest Baby wakes up somewhere between 11 and 1. Tristen usually handles him, although if I’m up I’ll take a stab at it, but if I’m up at that time I’m working, so more often than not if I can’t get him to go right back to sleep, which I usually cannot, I’ll hand him over to his momma, who will stick a teat in his mouth and snuggle him until he falls back asleep. Then she’ll either put him in the pack & play in our room or back in his crib in the boys’ room.

Sometimes he’ll wake up again in the very wee hours of the morning, but it’s usually just once a night now I think.

So a triumph: I think it was Wednesday night, Griffin woke up right at 11:00. Tristen was in bed and I was working on a website for a dentist client of mine (which has turned out very nice, if I do say so myself). I heard Griffin make some noise, but I didn’t go get him until the noises became fussier.

So I got him up and just held him and rocked him for a minute. He fell back asleep and actually ended up sleeping through the rest of the night.

We decided to call that a success: He slept through the night (with just a minor incident)!

It’s not the first time he did that, though. I think when we moved him out of our room Griffin had given us a couple intermittent through-the-nights.

We were hoping it was a harbinger of things to come. It was not.

The night of Thursday-Friday, Tristen was up with him for about an hour. Then last night I fell asleep on the couch, having made it most of the way through the latest episode of Watchmen after watching Duke beat Georgetown. I woke up to Griffin fussing around 2:30 and found that he was in the pack & play in our room instead of the crib. I tried to rock him back to sleep for a minute, but he was very squirmy and grabby. I gave him to Tristen for a minute so I could use the bathroom, but I took him back since I felt kind of awake anyway.

Tristen told me she had been up with him for about an hour just before that. I realized from talking to her later that he simply hadn’t fallen back asleep from when she had gotten up with him.

I ended up being up with him for about an hour as well. I gave him a bit of formula to try to settle him in case he was hungry (though we don’t want him to rely on late night feedings anymore), but he continued to be very kicky and grabby and squirmy. I tried sitting in the recliner in the living room with him, then we went to the playroom, which was a little darker. He still wouldn’t settle down, so I eventually let him roll around on the floor for a few minutes.

That seemed to annoy him in short order, so I picked him back up. Eventually he started showing sleep signs like burrowing his face into my shoulder and scratching the back of his head. He fell asleep not too long after that and went down in his crib just fine.

It’s just after 6:30 as I write this, and he hasn’t woken back up since then, although I do hear one of the twins coughing, so I assume everyone will be up and at ’em soon.

I didn’t go back to sleep, by the way. The bottles needed washing and formula needed to be made, and by the time I did all that I was too awake to go back to sleep, so I stayed up, putzed around on the computer, and did some work. I started feeling tired a little before 6, but I knew there was no point in going to sleep when the boys, who used to all sleep until 7 and sometimes a little later, would all be up within half an hour or so.

I’ll regret it later, I am very sure. Maybe Tristen will take the kids somewhere later,  I can take a nap when the boys do.

IF they do, that is.

Yesterday the twins didn’t nap at all. They seemed tired around 11, so I got Griffin up and put them down. They were quiet after a while, but I let them out when they started banging on the door. If they slept, it wasn’t for more than a few minutes.

I tried putting them down for an afternoon nap too. I asked them, mind you, if they wanted to take a nap. Phoenix nodded, I think, and they both headed towards their room.

They didn’t sleep at all though. I kept hearing them rummage around in their room and went back there when I saw on the camera that one of them had a paper-page book. I wanted to make sure they didn’t rip it, so I put it up and got them to get back in their bed (or, more accurately, on their mattresses).

I figured if they weren’t wrecking things, maybe at least it would work as a little bit of quiet time. I had put Griffin down for a nap in the pack & play in our room in case Fawkes and Phoenix were going to be loud, and I’m glad I did. It was the only time I really had to myself for the day.

Tristen called while I was… indisposed… and asked if I was looking at the cameras in their room. Fawkes, she told me, was in Griffin’s crib, but she couldn’t find Phoenix on any of the cameras. The reason she couldn’t see Phoenix, it turns out, is because he had not just climbed into Griffin’s crib, but had climbed up onto the attached changing table.

So that was the end of that nap time experiment.

On the plus side, even though they were fussy while getting ready for bed, they were out really quick last night. They usually moil around, as Tristen likes to say. The night before, we saw Fawkes sitting on Phoenix. They usually move around a lot until they get comfortable and pass out.

It’s 6:45 now and while nobody is fussing, it sounds like all my boys are awake. I’m going to get their morning milk (Fawkes and Phoenix) and formula (Griffin) ready and get to it. Hopefully we can keep it pretty quiet and Tristen will get to sleep in a little. Then hopefully I can get some sleep as well.

Edit: As I got up to get things ready, I heard Tristen walk into the boys’ room. She said she’d try to take Griffin with her to do some errands when the twins nap, so that’s when I’ll try to work my nap in.