So over the last three nights, Emma has awoken an hour or two after being put to bed crying for “Mommy” and “Daddy”. It’s gut-wrenching and difficult not to succumb to her enchanted calls, so periodically we enter her room to let her know everything is OK and that Mommy and Daddy will pick her up in the morning but right now it is sleep time. It’s amazing how much of this she understands because she immediately responds with a sad and crackly “no”. After comforting her we place her back into her crib but sure enough she is out a few minutes later. We tough it out until she falls asleep, and then enter her room once the coast is clear to pick her tired body off the floor and return her to her crib. It’s quite funny that Emma chooses a nice fluffy throw, that we place on her floor when we prepare her for bed, as her landing zone. She also raids her stuffed toy box and grabs “Emma the Frog” for some comfort. We have been placing Emma the Frog to bed with her ever since.

It’s 2:12 AM and Emma has been crying and calling out “Mommy” and “Daddy” for close to two hours now. I have gone into her room twice during that time to comfort her and explain to her that Mommy and Daddy love her but she needs to sleep in her bed. She responds with an extremely cute “No”. You see, her mother and I have been taking turns sleeping with her on an air mattress for a few days because she has been waking up at 2:30 AM every night since her now famous plunge. We have also been giving her a second bottle of milk to help put her to sleep which has resulted in some saturated diapers and bed wetting. Anyway, Elena and I decided that we needed to get Emma back into her normal sleep pattern. She has done so good for many months now. Our sleeping with her has enabled her to regress somewhat.Anyway, now that we have installed the “strait-rail” Emma will immediately vacate her bed once I put her in it. Since we can’t sleep until we know she is resting I decided to do a quick update to distract myself from the gut-wrenching calls. The last two times I went to put her in bed she told me, “all done” as she signed it. I couldn’t contain my laughter and asked her what she was done with. She is remarkably articulate at her young age and typically I can help her along. So I asked her, “are you done sleeping?”, to which she responded “no”. “Are you done with your crib?”, I asked, to which she again said, “no”. I was never able to figure out what she was done with but she was insistent the she was done as she repeated it a dozen times. She makes me smile and I so wanted to just fold and sleep with her tonight but I know we need to get things back to the way they were. Sleeping with her will only reinforce bad habits.

She’s been quiet for about 20 minutes so I am going to try to sneak into her room and place her in her crib. She can get out, but I don’t think she can get herself back in. As a result, I expect to see her sleeping somewhere on the floor of her room.