same same

Garrett likes to do whatever Caleb is doing. For example, when it's time to feed Caleb, Garrett is suddenly (and ravenously) hungry. When I'm snapping a few photos of Caleb, Garrett jumps into the shot and says "Cheeeeese!" And when I lay a blanket down on the floor so Caleb can have a bit of tummy time, Garrett gets into position to do the very same. He even grabs himself one of Caleb's baby toys.

Two nights ago, we introduced yet another thing that Garrett and Caleb can do together: sleep in the same bedroom. Garrett reached the point a few weeks ago where he slept better in the bottom bunk bed than he did in the crib, so we officially kicked him into big boyhood by raising the crib mattress and washing the crib bedding in preparation for his younger brother to use.

The crib may now have been ready for Caleb, but I wasn't quite ready to send him packing. There were a few things I wanted to accomplish before making the big move. One, we needed to do something about the difficulties we'd been encountering with Garrett's ability to settle down and go to sleep at bedtime; and two, if Caleb was going to be farther away from me during the night, I wanted him to have reached the point where he wasn't waking up every three hours to eat.

At about the same time that Garrett mastered the bottom bunk, I was working to master the art of Caleb's feeding schedule. A couple of bigger bottles spaced differently throughout the day later, and I magically had him down to a bedtime bottle around 8:00 and one nighttime feeding around 3:30.

So now that Caleb and I were sleeping much better, it was time to help Garrett do the same. I turned to the experts for help tackling this beast, namely the famed Dr. Richard Ferber and his classic book Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems. After reading about sleep cycles, circadian rhythms, and sleep phases, I realized that Garrett is an excellent sleeper. The problem lay with his bedtime, which was scheduled during his "forbidden zone for sleep." We shifted his bedtime from 8:00 (when he simply was not capable of sleeping) to closer to 9:00 (the time when, on a typical night, he was actually falling asleep) and voila! No more struggles at bedtime. He now falls asleep almost instantly and sleeps soundly through the night until he wakes naturally at 7:00.

Over the weekend, Blake and I realized that we wanted to reclaim our bedroom. Our first attempt to let Garrett and Caleb sleep together in the same room, on Sunday night, was about as unsuccessful as they come. But by Monday afternoon naptime, I was ready to try again. My strategy has been to put Caleb down first and then, once he was deeply asleep, it would be Garrett's turn to be tucked in. So far it has worked like a charm. It's been a bit of a juggling act on my part, trying to balance the times both boys get sleepy, but after two successful nights and three successful afternoon naps, I am just about ready to rechristen Garrett's Room as the Boy's Room.

Now whenever I tell Garrett to please be quiet because I'm going to put Caleb down, he first whispers to me to "Shhhh...quiet!" and then gathers up his blankets and climbs on his bed so that he can once again do the same thing Caleb is doing.

UPDATE:
Just because they are now sharing a room doesn't mean everything is peachy perfect. I wrote the above during this afternoon's nap. A few minutes ago I heard Garrett wake up; Caleb was still asleep. I stepped into the room to find the crib like this:


Can you find Caleb? Because he's in there, buried beneath all of the blankets and plush toys Garrett kindly decided to pile on top of -- err, I mean, share with him. (Yes, I unsmothered the baby, and no, to my great pleasure and surprise, he did not wake up.)