Before we left

Before we left for vacation we spent a few weeks doing some sleep training. For the first 20 months of life Athen did such a good job of going to sleep for naps and for bed time. He laid right down, said good night and was quickly lost in slumber. Some of my favorite moments in life are watching my children sleep. They look so precious they melt my heart.


At about 20 months we started seeing this:


And we quickly had to resort to this:


Which lead to the sleep training. We took advice from all the pros. We did our good night routine, read lots of stories, laid Athen down, gave hugs and kisses and told him to stay in his bed. We then waited by the door and watched him for very long periods of time. Every time he got up we marched in there, picked him up and put him back with out a word. No emotion, no words, no nothing. The first few nights we put him back in his bed over 150 times and spent over an hour. My days and evenings were taken up with my nose to the door of his bedroom. It has been a painful experience for us. I think I spend more time getting him to take a nap then his actual sleep time. He has slowly gotten a little better. We then took our trip to North Carolina and I was a little worried. He did ok there. Now it is back to the routine.

Some other things we did before our trip to the east:


This was Athen's second time to the dentist but his first time getting his teeth cleaned. He did pretty good.

We also spent a warm Sunday afternoon at my dad's house. My dad taught Athen how to drink from the hose. He then went on to watering the grass and getting all wet. Check out that diaper. What a wet load.