A sleepy can o' worms.

It's getting harder and harder for me to be patient while the dajamou settles down to sleep at night. She's not nursing to sleep anymore, hasn't for a few months. What I have been doing is singing her to sleep. We do one song while nursing and for the rest I sit in the rocking chair and sing until she's asleep. This had been going pretty well until this week.

Things, however have changed. (Novel concept! Change! In a toddler's life! Who'd a thunk?) Changed in what way, do you ask?

She rolls around, fusses with her covers, asks me constant questions (as if I don't get enough of that during the day), complains about being thirsty or hungry, sings to herself, talks to herself, bites her nails, picks her nose, pretty much anything she can think of to avoid being still and quiet long enough to fall asleep.

I'm pretty tired by the end of the day. I just don't seem to have the mental reserves left at 8 or 8:30 to deal with this. It's frustrating as hell. So, since I refuse to go back to nursing her to sleep, here's the new routine (if you can call it a routine, since we've only done it 1.5 times):

1. Diaper/pajamas, brush teeth
2. The dajadaddy reads us a chapter from "The Wizard of Oz"
3. Hug & kiss from the dajadaddy
4. One song while nursing
5. Ten minutes of singing in the rocking chair, during which I'm not going to try anymore to force her to be still and quiet, because --
6. After the ten minutes, whether she's asleep or not, I'm done. I go downstairs, read a book, check email, whatever. It's now her responsibility to get to sleep.

Let me just say right here that I'm NOT making her cry-it-out. That's not my thing; I'd definitely say I'm on the attachment parenting end of the spectrum. The two nights when I have left her room to fall asleep by herself, she didn't seem to be upset about it at all. Which is why I tried it more than once, and will try it again. My reasoning for this is that 1) me getting pissy about her sleep is not healthy for either of us, and 2) perhaps, since she's taking it rather well, she's old enough to start doing it for herself.

So. We shall see what happens. I'll update as developments occur.