Hip Hip Hurray!

Grady Goo is 3 months old today.

He has been sleeping through the night for a week now, particularly showing off last night by stretching his regular 8 hour sleep to 11 hours straight! I am a proud Mama lately as I have all three thriving kids on a schedule for the first time (I'm a slow learner). In the past I have rebelled against a routine because I wanted to stay spontaneous and flexible (qualities which spurred this blog to existence and provided it's continuous content). But no basic schedule left Tim and I sleepless, frustrated and without free-time let alone time together. The only regularity in this household was/has ever been dinner; in the dining room, every night at 6:30. After Ivy was born, Tim and I experienced personality reversal. He has always been scheduled and I uncommitted to routine (qualities I am certain attracted us to each other), but day after day of saturation in "Mommy-Land" I knew these Little Girls and I needed er...were begging for a change. But it was Tim who didn't want to drive a hard line while keeping one eye on the clock night after night. We dedicated a session of family counseling to figuring out why he and I couldn't see eye to eye on this. In a nutshell, I needed the girls on a schedule in order to get a little break at night especially because I have always been the parent on-call for any midnight cares and worries, where as he was rarely home before 7 and wanted to spend the evenings playing with the little girls-not directing them.You would not believe the amount of times in our parenthood we have had to regroup and get back on track (though starting Savannah in school has helped us with our maintenance issues). Now I fight hard to maintain a routine which benefits all of us while trying to find that carefree spontaneity throughout the day which comes so natural to me. I owe our current success with Grady to Kristi Marsh and her example with her kids (she is a fantastic Mom) and to our pediatrician who promised (a very skeptical) me that if I stuck to the Sleep-Eat-Play schedule, Grady would sleep through the night at 3 months old. Yay, we're there! I'm so excited to clear my head of the cobwebs and fog left by the last 12 weeks of sleepless nights and wake up to less puffy, bloodshot eyes.