Of Teeth & Sleep & Candy

So for the past week M has had a hard time going to sleep. Last Monday night she went down like normal, and then 30 minutes later was up again - screaming.

We couldn't figure out what the problem was, but it happened again the next, and the next. Each night got a little worse until we couldn't get her into bed without a fight at all. Finally around night 3 or 4 we figured out that she was afraid of the shadows in her room and thought they were monsters. (Though how she saw any shadows at all I don't know - their room is really dark with the lights off.) So we tried a night light, and even leaving the lights totally on. No dice.

We did finally discover that she got the whole shadow/monster thing from an episode of Curious George. Yikes! I think we've finally got a new bedtime system figured out, though I'm not totally happy with the adjustments we've made. For the last three days she's also refused to take an afternoon nap. So tonight it only took 30 minutes or so to get her to bed (book in her room while sitting in the chair, then bed w/music on, lights off, and a parent sitting next to her until she falls asleep), but it's partly because she may have given up the afternoon nap for good.

Sigh.

As much as I enjoy her nap time, I'm willing to give it up if it means she sleeps straight through the night. There were some not happy nights last week. The worst of which was when she woke up when A did. A was asleep again in about 20 minutes. It took us 90 minutes to get M back down.

Anyway. That's what's going on in our house lately! A has her very first tooth breaking through, and now sits up like a champ. She's also really getting the hang of the eating thing. Tonight at dinner she got really fussy when she saw we were eating and she didn't have anything. Once she started getting little bits of rice cereal mixed with mashed banana, she was happy as a clam.

Oh - Halloween was super cute. M was a giraffe (thanks Grandma!) and A was a pumpkin (thanks Nana!). We took them to Trunk N Treat at our church, and M was really uncertain about the whole thing. She kept a tight grip on my hand, and she wouldn't reach for the candy at all. And all of her "thank yous" were almost inaudible. But, when we got home we decided to visit just a few houses of friends and there she warmed up considerably. At one of the first houses we went to our friends invited us in and we chatted for several minutes. After this at each house we went to M just walked right in the door as soon as it was opened! We'll have to talk about etiquette I guess before we do this again!