Week Eleven (December 5)

Week Eleven was all about recovering from Thanksgiving. As expected, LL was very clingy and needy this week, insisting on being carried around the majority of the time. His butt barely touched the floor during Week Ten, and he was reluctant to have it touch the floor this week as well, but without eight million relatives around, he only had me to carry him around. Also, after a week of not napping, he didn't really see the point in napping this week, either. I had to bring out the big guns -- my trusty sling -- to soothe him to sleep for every single nap this week.

Also related to sleep: this week, LL moved from the bassinet in our room to the crib in his nursery! We had planned to transition him next week, after he'd had some time to recover from Thanksgiving, so it was a total accident when it happened. I was soothing him to sleep one night, and he was yelling a lot about how he didn't want to sleep. After pacing around his nursery trying to get him calm, my back was hurting and I needed a moment to stretch. We had been using his crib as a kind of staging area for weeks, a safe place to put him down for a moment. So I put him down in the crib so that I could stretch my back a bit before picking him up again. I put him down... I stretched... and then I noticed that there was silence. And there he was, sound asleep in the crib. I slowly tip-toed out of the room, and that was it -- transition complete. He has slept in his crib every night since.

LL finished this week with his first ever one-wake-up night (as opposed to the 2-3 wake-ups he'd become accustomed to). I credit Charlie, one of the other little boys in my New Mom's Group. Charlie had been sleeping through the night since he was five weeks old (!), so on Thursday, I held LL up to Charlie and asked Charlie to explain to LL how it's done. That night, he only woke up once. Since then, every infant in our group who has had a "conversation" with Charlie has started sleeping better within a week. Charlie has magical powers!

Finally, one more milestone this week: LL adopted his first "transitional object" -- something he clings to when he wants to be soothed. His object of choice is a handmade burp cloth from one of my MIL's friends, white with blue stars and a hand-crocheted edging. He loves it, and no other burp cloth will do.