I have a confession.

My 14 month old still naps in this thing. Yes, I'm rather embarrassed to admit it, but he does. Why? Well, for one, he likes it. We jokingly call it his "chill chair." He can be overtired and upset, and if I put him in it, he hust puts his little hands behind his head and kicks back to relax. If I can't get him to calm down by any other means, I just manually bounce the seat and within minutes he's quiet and almost asleep.

Another reason is it's convenient. You see, my boys share a room. If I put them in there at the same time, they keep each other awake. I've tried getting one down then puttingg the other in there. No matter how I do, this always results in the 2nd one waking the first one, and then I have 2 screaming kids. No fun. So at least for naps, Jacob sleeps in his room, and Simon sleeps in the bouncy seat.

Night time is a different story. Again, I am embarrassed to admit that I do not put Simon in his crib at night until he is completely asleep. This is accomplished in one of two ways. I either nurse him completely to sleep (which is not my favorite way to do it, as it can take for.ev.er.) or I put him in the seat and bounce him to sleep. Then I simply move him to his crib.

I know this is setting up terrible habits for him. I know he should be able to put himself to sleep at night. I just can't figure out how to do it without making poor Jacob completely crazy with sleep deprivation.

Another issue, of course, is night waking. Granted, Jacob didn't start soothing himself back to sleep until he was nearly 2 year old, so I guess I can't complain yet. But Simon....oh dear, Simon. He will only go to back to sleep one of two ways. I either nurse him back to sleep (again, not my favorite) or I have to stand and rub his back until he's nearly there (hmmm....also not my favorite). I generally go with the path of least resistance at night. But really. I'm tired! The other night, I tried the method where you let the baby cry for a few minutes at a time and you keep going in and repeating the same phrase (In my case it was "shhh. Night night. Lay down." followed by a short back rub and me leaving). Each time I left his room, he screamed louder than the time before. This of course woke Jacob up, who was none too happy about the situation. After an hour of that, I broke down and put Simon in my bed until he fell back asleep. The next day, not only was I exhausted, but so was Brian and so was Jacob. It seems the only one who was semi-well rested was Simon. So Jacob, being 3 and overly tired, was being a complete pill, and Brian and I (also being overly tired) were -er- less than stellar parents that day. Not good.

I know I need to get this child to sleep on his own. I just don't know how to do it. And until I figure it out, well, I guess we'll keep doing it this way. At leaest like this, I'm the only one that remains too tired. The sacrifices a mother makes. *sigh*