Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Eight is Great!


Eight. It's just a number. After seven, before nine. Can be found in the popular joke "why was six afraid of seven?" Has a "crazy" card game named after it. Usually represents the number of working hours in a day. But last night, eight was the number of hours Kaylani slept consecutively. And since she didn't fall asleep until 11pm, eight hours was enough for Kaylani to sleep "through the night" for the very first time. And that meant that for the very first time, we (and by we, I mean Mommy) didn't have to get out of bed in the middle of the night.

My alarm went off at 6:30am as usual, and I snoozed it until a little after 7am as usual. Mommy was stirring (probably because music kept coming on every 9 minutes), so as is customary when Mommy is at least a tiny bit awake, I asked her what time Kaylani woke up last night. Her answer was one that I've never heard before. She didn't even roll over to look at me, and just mumbled out "she didn't." I looked at the clock again to make sure that it was right, did the math in my head, and that's when I realized that she made it eight hours. Eight whole hours. Amazing!

If sleeping was a profession, I think Kaylani might have her career decided for her. She's a great sleeper. She's such a good sleeper that she's the envy of kids everywhere. Actually, the kids don't mind, it's the parents that are amazed how good of a sleeper she is. She's almost too good (well, not in my mind). People always ask if we're sleeping, and I have to tell them that we actually are. I obviously sleep more during the night than Mommy does, but even Mommy can't really complain about sleep. After all, Kaylani has been sleeping 4-5 consecutive hours on average for the last month or so. But forget about 4-5 hours, could we be looking at 8 consecutive hours from here on out? Could it be?

I feel like writing this post is already going to jinx the whole eight hours of sleep thing. I remember when a co-worker told me that her oldest daughter used to sleep 12 straight hours no matter what time she put her to bed. And this was before the age of 6 months. At the time, 12 hours seemed unattainable, the holy grail if you will. But now, I feel like it could be within our reach. Just one month ago, Kaylani was sleeping 4 hours. Perhaps in another month, we'll be looking at 12 hours of sleep? I can't even begin to think of the things we could accomplish with Kaylani sleeping for 12 straight hours.

But then there's the other side. There are the doubters, and the naysayers, who find it necessary to keep reminding us that it's too good to be true. That once Kaylani hits the 3 month mark (which is in less than 3 weeks), she'll "wake up" and be too interested in everything around her to sleep at all. That's when all things will go to poop. And I'll admit that I don't doubt that it could happen. It's well documented that babies do "wake up" around 3 months. But you know what? We've beaten the odds since day 0. Our first child was supposed to bring 30+ hours of labor, and the first 3 months were supposed to bring little sleep for Mommy and Daddy. To this day, neither of those things has been true for us. So the only thing I will accept as a given is that every child is different. And for that, I couldn't be any happier.

Now it's time for Kaylani to make her way into her crib, and also time for Daddy to start the timer to see if we can go for eight on back to back nights. Only the night will tell, so in the meantime, here are pictures from the last 2 days. I hope that these pictures are the only thing I have to look at until at least 7am tomorrow, but we'll see.

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