Sleeping Beauty

I just realized, tonight, that I hadn't written a blog for this week.

So, apologies to those of you who are dedicated enough to check in every Monday night or Tuesday morning.

When we last left our heroine, she was struggling against the evil power of sleep.

Her attempts to ward off a restful night were met with some resilience, as sleep found help from Finley's own parents.

No matter how hard she fought to keep from dozing off, Momma and Poppa would arrive to get her to return to her prison on the mattress.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't that dramatic, but she sure made it seem that way. It turns out that my philosophy of reasoning may have actually worked. She really only had one rough night since last week, but after that, it's been smooth sailing. Of course, I may have just jinxed myself and in all probability she most likely has gotten back into a pattern, but I like to think my reasoning plan did the trick.

Actually, it was a bit of reasoning and working a bit harder to help her wind down. Plus, we moved her bedtime back a bit, just to see if she would be just a little more tired before we set her down. It turns out that at her age, she's in sort of a transition state. According to one of the things Heather found while searching for information, once a child reaches three years old, they may not need as much sleep as they have been getting when they were younger. I'm not sure why, but I'm guessing it has to do with how she is evolving, socially.

At the risk of sounding too scientific, I'm guessing that as she learns more about the world around her and as she discovers and joins OUR patterns, she begins to adopt some of our social behaviors. Basically, as she interacts with us more - speaking more like us, eating more like us - her mind and body are adjusting to how we do things. If we don't act tired, then her brain may decide that she's not tired, either. I'm probably full of it, but it sounds good to me!

She also may just want to play a lot more and not go to bed until she thinks she's ready. But

somewhere along the line, her body is going to need less and less sleep, until she falls into the orderly 8 hours that everyone else is supposed to get. She has to adapt somehow.

The bottom line is that she's much better, now. It could have just been a phase or maybe it WAS something a little more biological. Either way, Heather's not waking me up in the middle of the night to go rock Finley. They're BOTH sleeping through the night. Now that's a social behavior I can believe in.