Sleepy time

Its funny how different my kids are. Already, even though Elizabeth is just getting started.

For instance, sleep. They are such different sleepers.

As a baby, Andy was a champ sleeper. 7pm to 7am from about 4 months old. He would lay in his crib and sing himself to sleep. I can hear those sweet little coos. Once he learned how to turn on his turtle, we would hear it go off in the middle of the night when he woke up. Andy slept on his back with legs and arms strewn about. He was a blankie and paci baby from the get go. Nowadays, he still enjoys his turtle. I still hear it in the middle of the night. He's still a blankie and paci baby. Two blankies. Multiple pacis. At some point, he picked up the habit of sleeping with one paci in his mouth and one in each hand. He sleeps all over his crib. I hear him kicking the slats as he rolls around. He's still a good sleeper. Even if he's in there for an hour before he falls asleep, he's happy. Especially if he has Woody and Buzz (courtesy of Aunt Serena!).

Elizabeth, on the other hand, not such a good sleeper. And its not me. I did the same thing with her that I did with Andy. Daytime sleep - 30 or 45 minutes at a time and usually 3 naps a day. Occassionally her afternoon nap will be close to two hours. Those are, of the course, the days where Andy doesn't nap. Instead of sweetly singing herself to sleep, she's a little more rowdy. She's a tummy sleeper, so when I lay her down on her back or her side, she immediately rolls onto her tummy and burrows her face in her blankies. Yes, she's been sleeping with blankies for awhile now. She sleeps better with one. Don't turn me in for violating a SIDS rule. When she was tiny, I would pull it away from her face after she fell asleep. And now that she moves, and especially since she acts like she's suffocating in the half a second it takes to pull her shirt over her head, I'm not really worried about her with the blankie. Thankfully, she's also a paci baby. The jury was out on that one as she didn't take to it as quickly as Brother. So there she is. In bed with blankies and pacis. Rubbing her face in her blankie, hiking her hiny up in the air, laying back down and kicking the mattress with all her might. So loud I can hear it in the monitor. Then she flips over so she can kick her birds. Then she'll bring her blankie to her face and roll around, back and forth, back and forth. And she talks to herself. And then, all of a sudden, just when it gets to the point where I think she's geared herself up so much she can't possibly fall asleep, it goes dead silent.

The funniest part of sleep is when they awake. Andy wakes up and starts moving around, not talking yet. Again, I hear the crib slats rattling as he rolls around. He likes to wake up slowly. You know he's ready to get out of bed when he starts talking. He doesn't call for Mama or Dada to come get him. Andy has conversations. With himself, with his turtle or his mobile, who knows. When I open the door to get him up, there he is. Standing in the corner of his crib closest to the door, the paci in his mouth barely concealing his big grin. "Hi Mama", he'll say. And because I always ask him if he had a good snooze, he's now starting to tell me "good snooze." Or on the days when he never falls asleep for a nap, it'll be "I not sleepin (sounds more like sweepin)". Sometimes he jumps around his crib for a minute before he lets me pick him up. Every now and then he tries to climb out.

When I go in to get Elizabeth up, she pokes that little head up above her bumper pads, also with a big grin from behind her paci. And then she starts her kicking and frantic arm movements. Recently I've gone in to find her on her back, with her legs propped up on the top rail of the crib. This is Elizabeth the lounger. The kicking and flapping continue when I pick her up.

Funny kids. So different. So much personality, even when they're asleep!