On Sleep

Meet PandaMan.

PandaMan has been Josiah's sleep companion since he was about a year. Which, incidentally, was when I detached him from the larger Mother Panda that he came with. I think that was symbolic for me.

Meet Joey.

We left PandaMan in SC during the week we were in Atlanta. Josiah didn't really care all that much, but he wasn't sleeping great, so we thought a replacement friend would help. It did. Three facts about Joey: 1) He was bought at Justice and Nathan was horrified, but it was the only store in the mall with stuffed animals. 2) Josiah chose him, despite our attempts to get him to choose a less terrifying animal. 3) His name is Joey because earlier in the day we were looking at pictures of baby kangaroos.

Here are PandaMan and Joey looking less scary.

During the two weeks surrounding Christmas, Josiah was sleeping in our room. Whenever Josiah's crib is in our room, he always wakes up in the middle of the night and asks to sleep with mommy and daddy. And we let him. Because we really don't care all that much and because the other option is to listen to him scream and cry while in the same room as us. Oh, and because he sleeps longer in the morning.

Unfortunately, two weeks of sleeping in bed with us led to not wanting to go to sleep at night or nap times. He was constantly getting out of his crib and learned this trick:

"Mommy, I need pacis!"

Thankfully, after a few days of having his own room, things seemed to have resolved themselves. He's back to sleeping through the night and taking good naps.

But other than just having his own, very dark, room, he and daddy have been having nightly exercise time. Observe leg press:

Sit ups and push ups:

Also, some modified bench pressing.

And weird yoga.

And just general laughter.

And happiness.

See? Don't they look more tired now? :)

Anyway, I'm super thankful he's sleeping better!

Now about those 2 weeks of travel we have coming up...