Chica's Sleep Chart Project

Hellooooooo, peeps, and Happy Hump Day of this short-ish, post-holiday week!

Tonight, I'll pause our little Ode To Summer posts in order to give a brief Chica sleep update.

The long and short: though we're certainly not sleeping well around our house these days, I feel we've at least made some small strides since this disruptive phase began about six weeks ago. 

From the beginning, the hubby and I have known without a doubt that we were dealing with a wildly overtired little toddler. But it was a bit of the chicken/egg scenario. Overtired = terrible sleep. Terrible sleep + no naps = perpetual cycle of overtired/terrible sleep. So...we've been making it a priority to do what we can to combat the over-exhaustion first and foremost.

For awhile, that meant sleeping on Chica's bedroom floor, because wake-ups were so frequent and dramatic and lengthy (more than an hour per episode for her to calm down).

But we've officially ended the palette sleeping (praise the heavens!) and moved on to sitting in her glider when she wakes, until she's able to get herself back to sleep (with the obvious goal of shortening the length of time we're in there until we're no longer trekking up there every time).

It's all easier said than done, but after consulting a trifecta of pediatrician/sleep consultant/friends-family--some solicited, others not, ha--we're moving forward with our gut to power through this yucky phase, as we've always done.

A couple other practical matters that are helping:

First, a new awesomesauce nightlight that Chica luuuurvs (The Good Nite Lite). Parents set it on a schedule to glow like a moon at bath time/bedtime and a sun when it's time to rise in the morning. It's helping to reinforce the day/night schedule and keep her comforted, when possible. And it's way better than leaving her closet light on, as we'd always done by default.

Second--and this is really key--we're trying to bump up bedtime much earlier. You'd think this would be welcome and easy to execute in our house, but given the hubby's work hours and my absolute refusal to cut his time with the girls altogether, we just can't get everybody down as early as it has been recommended (particularly during the nap weaning phase), but we're doing our best.

And lastly, it was recommended that we make a visual sleep chart, along with a few sleep rules that Chica should follow, just to reinforce as much as possible. The initial purpose was also to incentivize with stickers, but to be honest, Chica could care less about those kinds of incentives, and I'm not at a point where I want to instead punish her for "breaking" the sleep rules.

So...we just made it a fun project, and it's been nice to see it around and use it as a talking point to discuss positive sleep associations.

Now, ENOUGH with the sleep blah-blah babble updates, ha. Everybody goes through these regressions with kiddoes. This one has just been particularly tough, and particularly poor timing, given I'm in my nine-hundred month of pregnancy. But now you're in the loop, we can al think happy sleep thought, and get back to the fun stuff like looking at cute pics :)

We started with a cork board...

That we fancied up with decorative tape...

Chicklet "helped," of course...

Then we checked out the pictures I'd printed of the things we do at bed time, selected fun paper and glued them down...

Paused to watch the truck pick up the final old-guest-room items for donation...

Very carefully handled the fun push-pins I'd purchased...

And then selected our letters to spell out our sleep "rules."

The rules are shorthand due to space issues--ha. But they make sense to us :)

Chica was pretty into it, and any craft that holds her attention is a thumbs-up for me. So here's hoping this one can serve the double purpose of helping us out a teeny tiny bit sleep wise.

Peace out.