Billy Goat Style

I've written far too many posts this summer about Aubrey's sleep schedule. It's one thing that is heavy on my mind. You probably remember my post when Aubrey starting climbing out of her crib and the infamous rubbing poop all over the room story. For about a week or slightly longer after that incident occurred, the only way we could get Aubrey to succumb to sleep was to lay her in our bed with us and then if we were still awake transfer her to her bed. Needless to say, this approach doesn't easily facilitate a happy married life and we quickly wanted to transition out of that type of behavior.

So for almost a month I have been laying next to Aubrey in her bed until she falls asleep. I recently read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and one interesting fact I learned in there is that it takes an average person 7 minutes to fall asleep. Therefore, I've been doing a lot of counting in my head.

Then...two days ago, I did something monumental. I went in Aubrey's room with her. Said goodnight. Asked her all the normal nighttime questions, my nightly routine consists mostly of questions like

Are you the smartest girl I know?
Are you the prettiest girl I know?
Are you going to be president of the United States someday?
What about an artist?
Are you going to be in the Olympics?
Are you going to be a businesswoman?
Or a lawyer? Or a doctor?
Are you going to be a mommy?

I do honestly go through every single one of these questions every night. And usually in that order. Sometimes I throw in some other professions like chef or actress or entrepreneur or comedian. And Aubrey dutifully responds no to every single one.

And then after going through my nightly questions I said good night. I hugged her, kissed her and left the room with the door shut tight.

I let her cry herself to sleep. It seemed like a huge breakthrough at the time and after two nights of this working fantastically I was starting to get pretty cocky. I was started to get that parental feeling where you're pretty sure you've done something right even though all signs point to it's way too early to tell. I thought I had finally cracked the code on Aubrey sleeping and in my mind a few more nights (three tops?) of Aubrey crying herself to sleep would blend seamlessly into silently easing herself into slumber.

And then suddenly it was 1:00AM and I was awoken by a giant crash as Aubrey awoke, stumbled out of bed and, in an attempt to escape her bedroom, rammed her head billy goat style into the bedroom door. Needless to say she spent the remainder of the night sleeping in our bed with her head shoved into my shoulder and no matter how many times I moved her away from me and getting more sore by the minute shoulder, she always found her way back to the sweet spot.

One step forward. Two steps back. Optimistic for tonight!