Thursday, December 10, 2009

Blueberry moon

Here's our latest attempt to get a better night's (morning's?) sleep.


It's called the Good Nite Lite. It has a timer. In the evening it glows blue like a moon and stays blue all night -- a sign to your child that it's time to stay in bed. At the time you set for morning, it switches to orange and becomes a sun -- time to wake up.

Why is this necessary? Because even though she's almost 2, Molly continues to make it almost impossible for her parents to sleep like normal human beings. For weeks on end she will wake up every morning between 4 and 4:30 a.m. and stand in her crib calling to us for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes ... it's unbelievable. When she was a baby she just cried. When she learned words she stood there shouting "mama" and "dada." Now that she talks, she has a wide repertoire of requests: "need blankets," "need diaper change," "need tissue." If you ignore it, it just goes on and on. If you respond, you find that she doesn't really need a diaper change, etc. and she cries harder when you leave. If you bring her into bed, she plays and kicks but does not fall back to sleep. No changes in bed time, earlier or later, have made an impact. It's like an internal alarm clock that tells her 4:30 a.m. is when the day begins no matter what.

SO...
I don't want to jinx it, but since we got this little night light that little moon has given us about five good mornings in a row -- and by that I mean, she didn't call out to us until the sunshine turned on between 5 a.m. and 5:15.

AHHHH! Sleeping in.

We had to find a friendly name for the moon because the first night we tried it she told us it was scary and couldn't stop staring at it. Now she gets excited when it turns on and has a little ritual of touching Blueberry Moon's face, sometimes kissing it and saying hello.

All hail the Blueberry Moon!

2 comments:

Stephanie said...

That is sooo cool! Where did you find it? It will be nice when you can gradually set the sun to "come up" at a later time. Good luck!

AnnaPK said...

The moon kicks butt!!!!! I am glad it is working (fingers crossed)! If you tell Lucy it is time for bed she asks if her moon is on and when we are traveling we even use the moon from afar, we just tell her it is on at home and it works!! That thing is totally worth every penny!