Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Daddy Wins

As I drove up to the house tonight (around 830PM - after Eli's bedtime), I saw Lehr in the window signing to me: "Daddy. Win."

You see, once upon a time, when Eli was a wee lad of three months, we had a great nighttime routine which included Dad giving Eli his last feeding (via bottle obviously) and then putting him down for the night. For whatever reason, that stopped around the holidays and we never went back to it. Fast forward to a month ago when we pick up Eli after having been out to dinner until 10PM to find he refused to go to sleep for Cooper's parents. I finally figured out that without exception, I have fed Eli and put him to bed every night since Christmas, inadvertently creating an unhealthy need. (That's right; no matter how many books I've read, I will still get it wrong many times.)

About two weeks ago we started to work on 'breaking' that nighttime mommy-dependence, first by having Lehr feed Eli a bottle before bed (instead of me nursing him), and then by having both of us put him to bed (to re-introduce Daddy to the equation, and then hopefully remove me). Last night was the first attempt to remove me completely (as I was not even in the house), and with a weak attempt at a fight (20 minutes), Eli gave in and Lehr won the battle (this time anyway).

On a separate note, I was out of the house because I went for my first training walk for the Atlanta 2-Day Walk for Breast Cancer. Thank you to everyone who has already donated in my name; if you haven't yet and want to, I will keep the link up on this page until the money is due (late summer).

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