Sleepy Time

As a parent, one can sometimes focus on the struggles or difficulties that come along with raising a child: changing a very dirty diaper, arriving to Mass a little late, rocking a bawling child in the middle of the night.  Sometimes these things just irk you.  It really boils down to one thing that most if not all parents desire to have during the child-rearing years: SLEEP.  Aw, good ole sleep.  It would be a lot easier if at those moments of frustration mom and/or dad were with it completely.  But, as we know, with a baby comes lack of sleep.  And, with a lack of sleep comes irritated parents...not all of the time, but it definitely happens.  Since Gianna was born, both Lauren and I, especially Lauren, have battled with trying to find time to sleep.  Some days are better than others and most nights have been very similar: Gianna cries for food, Lauren or I gets her from bed, Lauren feeds her, and we or most of us fall back to sleep.  That has been a pretty consistent routine.  To our surprise, though, that may all be changing.

During the past couple of weeks, we have been trying to put Gianna in bed around nine o'clock.  She occasionally cries or stirs, but usually she sleeps for at least a couple of hours.  Two nights ago, Lauren put her to sleep around eight, and so we both thought she would awake around 11 or 12 wanting to nurse. To jump forward a bit, Gianna and I went to the noon Mass at the Cathedral Basilica that following day.  Since Lauren works across the street, we stopped by to visit her for just a bit.  This is how part of conversation went:

Lauren: Did you get Gianna out of bed last night?
Me: No.
Lauren: You know what this means?
Me: What?
Lauren: She slept until 4:45!
Me: Are you serious?
Lauren: Yes!

Disclaimer: this is not word-for-word what was said, but you get what I mean.  In other words, Gianna slept for almost nine hours straight!  We couldn't believe it.  We thought it was going to be a gradually thing: four hours one night, four and a half another.  But no, she definitely pulled a fast one on us.  And you know what?  She did it again last night!  She slept close to eight hours straight before Lauren got her out of bed. 

What does this tell us?  Gianna is growing up...sob, sob, tear.  It's a good thing, though, and we are happy God is blessing Gianna as well as us with a few more consecutive hours of sleep.   Hopefully this will give Lauren more energy and me, well, more energy knowing that Lauren has more energy :) 

So, pleasant dreams to you all and may God bless you and rock you gently in His arms...and happy feast of St. Vincent de Paul!