Whatever Gets You Through the Night

Carter inconceivably turned 10 weeks old this past weekend. The time has gone very quickly, but at the same time, it is hard to imagine a time when he wasn't a fixture in our family. Carter has changed so much since we first brought him home. He has trained us as to the things he wants and likes and when he tries to communicate with us, we usually get it. He does everything with a lot more purpose now: moving when he is playing with his toys, expressing actual happiness when he smiles, and looking where there is noise.

A very strange thing began to happen last weekend. We had constantly joked that each night would be the night that Carter would finally sleep six solid hours. He surprised us last Saturday night by skipping straight over six and advancing to seven. We believed this to be a fluke and not a pattern; however, he has done it four of the past eight nights. Of course at this point, we now expect it, so we are disappointed when he wakes us up at 4AM or 5AM, but he generally goes back down very quickly, within half an hour or less. I honestly never thought we would see the day, but after reading today's Baby Center update, I was informed that we are a lucky ten percent of parents that get to enjoy this uninterrupted sleep, so I count myself as lucky.

Since this long-term sleep has started occurring, we are starting to get him used to sleeping in his room in his crib. He doesn't sleep as well in his room, so we are just trying to get him to go down for naps in there for the time being, but I think he will continue to get more used to it and eventually, we will get our room back to ourselves and get to take down the bulky pack and play in our room.

Last weekend we took our first road trip to Pampa to visit Liz's grandparents, or Carter's great-grandparents. We planned the car time are Carter's normal nap times and everything went very well. Carter slept all the way there, got up, ate, played, and when he got tired, we packed him up for the ride home. He slept all the way home. This was kind of a trial run for the trip to Colorado Springs we will be taking in a few weeks to visit my sister and my nephews. I know that it won't be quite that smooth, but I am optimistic that he will spend a good amount of time sleeping and a good amount of time able to be placated by one of us.