Hello Bright Eyes!

Last week I finally admitted defeat and called in the reinforcements to help us straighten Elisa's sleep schedule out. Yes, Grandma flew back to New York and even gave up her chance to vote tomorrow (which pains me to say) to see for herself what all this drama was about. So far, it hasn't proven too effective in changing anything, but we're very happy to have the extra pair of hands. There's nothing like a grandmother to share the good AND the bad and smile at it all.

Of course, we're still getting the only real consolidated sleep at the very END of the night--Elisa goes down by 5 or 6 or 7am and then sleeps a good 4-5 hour chunk. Trying to get her to move that sleep slot to a more reasonable hour has been our primary goal these last few nights with little success. We've tried letting her nap less during the day, play more during her awake times, and use our new found noise machine and aquarium crib toy to lull her into a profound sleep. NO DEAL. Elisa has decided that she would still much rather coo and smile and squirm all night long and confuse us even more. It's not as if she's fussy or crying or gassy all night. In fact, most of her awake time from midnight til dawn is nothing more than that--awake and alert without any known problems. So we spend this time lulling her to sleep only to have her wake up crying with a burp or just not sound enough asleep to stay that way. It's as if every little creak of our wooden floors or a little groan of the couch cushions makes her spring back to life and has us all walking on eggshells through the night. Meanwhile, once daylight strikes, you could have full conversations with the TV blaring within earshot of this girl and she dozes straight through. It's so annoying. But never fear...we're going to IKEA today to buy her crib and I'm just sure that will do that trick. Ah, yes, I can feel the sleep...