That is One Strong Willed Night Owl.....

Well, I gave up on the super early bedtime routine. Mackenzie was having none of that. Crying for 1 hour (+) whether in arms, crib, rocking chair, etc.....not worth it to get her to sleep. (Most of the time what happened was I just fell asleep with her in the chair because it took so long to calm her down - which didn't accomplish my goal of spending time with my hubby at night!). So, we decided to slowly move up the bedtime instead of abrubtly trying to put her down around 8pm, hoping she won't notice the small increments. I noticed that if you feed her at 10pm or later as her last feeding, she falls asleep and goes straight in the crib for 8-10 hours of sleep :) If you feed her earlier than 10pm for her last feeding, she finishes eating, and looks up at me like "what are we going to do now, mommy??"

So my goal became to get her last feeding as close to 10pm as possible and not much later. Then, start doing 9:30ish, and so on & so forth. Well, last night went pretty good. I think her feeding was around 9:40, and around 10 she finished eating. She was still awake, so I rocked her a bit. She fussed a little, so I decided to put her in her crib and see how that went. She went almost right to sleep (with a little pacifier monitoring by mommy). Perfect....Great!!! (I pat myself on the back at how well this is going.....I'm doing such a great job at this new plan!!) Fast forward to tonight. It looks like Mackenzie is ready for a feeding around 9:20. I'm so excited, this potentially means I could be relaxing on the couch by 9:45. This is gonna be a WONDERFUL evening :) I nurse her. She falls asleep (Whoo hoo! Another pat on the back!). I put her in the crib. She stays asleep. (Man, do I know what I'm doing or what??). I go downstairs with the monitor in hand showcasing a sleeping baby to my husband (so he knows what a great mother I am!). A good 20 minutes go by. We are definitely in the clear.

HOLD ON......is that the red light on the monitor?? I turn on the video screen. Sure enough, she's crying & starting to flail. Not a good sign. Let's just say over an hour later.....I'm finally back downstairs with a sleeping baby upstairs. All I know is this baby is definitely not a fan of going to bed early. My guess is she's got yet another of her father's genes (according to his mother, he's been a night owl from the beginning....). Couldn't she take after me in this one area?

Oh well. Life goes on. I'm still optimistic (somewhat) that she'll go to bed before 10pm. There's always tomorrow night........