No Sleep for Baby Means No Sleep for Mama

For the past month, sleep has been a dirty word in this house. I don't know what's going on with Braysen, but he has suddenly decided that sleep is just not his thing. I wake up often during the night to him sitting up in his crib and talking to himself. He stares at the light that is on the video monitor, and when you look at the monitor screen, it looks like he's talking right to you. It's very creepy.

I know the poor kid is tired, because the second I pick him up, he lays his head on my shoulder and falls asleep almost instantly. For some reason, he just cannot stay asleep.

Naps are no different. He never was a good napper. He has always been our "45 minute man", because he only naps for 45 minute increments. No joke, no exaggeration. We have timed him. It's literally almost 45 minutes to the minute EVERY TIME. No matter where we are, he can be napping on the living room floor, in his crib, at my parent's, while somebody's holding him, at the store, in the backseat, he naps for 45 minutes. Well it has become increasingly difficult to get him to go down for naps, and to stay down for naps.

With all this lack of sleep, by the end of the day, he is a grumpy bear! So much to the point, that after 4:00, I basically cannot get anything done, because he wants to constantly be held because he is over-tired. Nothing can entertain him at this point. He usually cries through dinner. This has been really hard, as you can imagine, but what makes it worse is that I am home by myself at night time. Tony doesn't usually get home until around 1 or 2, so I do it alone. Most of the time, dinner doesn't happen anymore for the grown-up in this house.

Last night, I'd finally had enough. I worked from home all day and took care of Braysen. Of course, naps were pretty much non-existent yesterday. By the end of the day, not much had been done around the house, and I had to at least get a load of laundry done. I set him down on a blanket in the living room, and he of course screamed liked I was pulling his toenails off one-by-one. So....

I took him down the hallway with me to the laundry, plopped his little butt into one laundry basket, and proceeded to take my laundry out of the dryer and lay it on top of him. I then dragged both laundry baskets, one with his little tush still in it, to the living room and folded my laundry. He sat this way for about 20 minutes with no whining or anything.

I can't get the pic to upload on blogger, but you can click here to see it. I'll try to upload it again later.