Sleep training: UPDATE

Well folks, I am beyond happy to report that sleep training has been successful thus far. We are regressing somewhat in the time that it takes to get to sleep, but the time spent staying asleep has increased dramatically, which has done wonders for my purple (now lavender) eye bags and the overall amount of affection that I show Sammy in the morning hours. Last night he slept SIX STRAIGHT HOURS and I am not even kidding you right now!!! Of course, there is always the possibility that I slept through a couple of crying episodes that took place in the middle of the night (not that that's ever happened before...) but I truly think he slept the entire time. Stinks for Sam that Steve isn't here to casually roll over and smack me in the head and "accidentally" wake me up when I'm sleeping through a crying session. Sometimes Steve pretends that he doesn't hear him so he won't have to get up, and usually during those times, I dramatically yawn/groan, comment on how I've only been horizontal for 27 minutes, make a huge ruckus getting untangled from the covers, and flop back and forth from standing up to sitting down on the bed to put my socks on. It's not until I'm positive that I've pulled Steve out of his deep slumber that I proceed to pick up said screaming child who is neither hungry nor opening his eyes. The frustration associated with this situation is almost indescribable. Once I finally get the nugget back to sleep (which in itself is sorta confusing since his eyes never open), I flop hard back onto the bed to let Steve know just how long I've been up with his son and then make another big production getting settled back into the sheets. You would think the man would be happy as a clam to go out in the field (and get the you-know-what away from us), but I think the below-freezing temps are putting a damper on his full nights of uninterrupted sleep.
As a disclaimer, I must say that my husband does frequently get up in the night to assist me in feedings and other general baby duties so I can't rag on him too much. (I would hate to have to step up my "dramatic wake-up" regimen every night, because between that and taking care of the kid, I would have no energy left for the important things, like getting coffee and gabbing with my neighbor all day long.)

So in an attempt to keep our relationship friendly with our upstairs neighbor, affectionately known as "Mr. Clean," I made some pretzel kisses as a peace offering of sorts, you know, to make up for the fact that I've been letting my kid scream his lungs out for hours on end the past few nights. But Mr. Clean and I never seem to cross paths; he's always getting home when I'm driving away or vice versa, and I'm not exactly sure what he does that requires him to get home at 2:45 in the morning on a Monday night, but I didn't feel that that was the appropriate time to present him something with the word "kisses" in it while dressed in my pajamas. I was later comforted by my mama telling me that screaming children are an expected thing to hear when one is renting an apartment and that he probably doesn't hear him anyway. As much as my head disagrees with this particular train of thought, my tummy sure agrees with taking care of the peace offering I was planning to give him and that totally doesn't help with the losing of the baby weight and oh my goodness I am going to be in a wedding in six months so I've got to quit eating this junk already! Pray for Mr. Clean that he will make it through this week without drilling a hole through his floor, squeezing through it, and beating me with a rubber hose for letting my child scream through the ceiling at him at all hours of the night. If I see him, I might try to salvage a few of those yummies to give him and then remind him that we will be outta here by the weekend.

And this is one reason we go for the coffee in the mornings...