Monday, May 4, 2009

Tips and tricks

My new nickname for Ryan is "Roly Poly Oly". He rolls, twists, and bends whenever we try to change his diaper, change his clothes, or put him to bed/nap.

The odd thing is that he'll be still longer when we're changing him on the floor or in the crib than if he's on the changing table. So we no longer put him up there because he automatically flips over and pulls himself to the railing. The bad thing about that is that it is more up and down off the floor for me and my bad knees.

Naptime and bedtime have been a real issue this week. It used to take about 15 minutes of wiggling and rolling around before he would settle down enough to go to sleep. The past 2 days/nights it has been 30-40 minutes each time for him to fall asleep. I gave up at 40 minutes at Saturday's afternoon nap and put him in the swing where he only slept for 30 minutes. He no longer takes hours and hours of naps in the swing. It's usually something I use after he's woken up in the crib after 45 minutes.

Our bedtime routine hasn't changed, but maybe it needs to. We do a bottle, change clothes, the same 2 books, and then bed. We even tried keeping them up 30 minutes longer, and it still took 30 minutes for him to go to sleep.

The real change is his mobility. He will start to settle down, but then he'll roll over on his knees and move to a sit up position. He doesn't know what to do to go to sleep once he's sitting up, so he starts to fuss. And last night he actually pulled up on the side rail of the crib. Thankfully Barry had lowered it down the night before.

Any tips would be appreciated. 40 minutes is a long time to be in and out of the room at bedtime.

2 comments:

Nicole said...

Here are a few ideas:

1. Braedon played/sang/etc for 30 minutes forever. Wait, he still does....;) Eventually they do fall asleep.

2. One thing we've found to be very effective is after the first time of going in, don't talk/coo/give eye contact. No attention at all, just lay him down. They learn very early that crying usually equals mommy.

3. There's always my old friend, letting him cry it out.

As far as the rolling over on the changing table goes, harness the power of the mean mommy voice and tell him no and flip him back over. Mobility means the mean mommy voice will start coming out to play a lot! ;)

Kathryne (Reeves) Lee said...
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