Happy Halloween!

Nate enjoyed his first Halloween and dressed up as a lobster, in honor of his Maine roots. Rather than going trick-or-treating, we went over to our friends Mike and Holly's, whose 18-month-old daughter Camille was dressed up as a butterfly. Nate was a trooper and wore his costume for a good hour, munching on his tentacles before getting completely annoyed with it. He loved playing with Camille, even though she is a much older woman.

Last night we finally let Nate cry it out, as our pediatrician told us to do. After six months, babies no longer need a middle-of-the-night feeding. If they still wake up, it's out of habit. Nate has slept through the night a handful of times, but he's still waking up sometime between 3-5 am to eat. He always went back to sleep, so it never really bothered us, but we realize it's time for him to break the habit. He's such a great baby going to bed at night. We put him down around 7:30 and he never cries or fusses - if anything, he'll just babble himself to sleep. I think this is because months ago, we let him cry for a while (never longer than five minutes) before going in to comfort him. So he learned to soothe himself. Now it's time for him to soothe himself during the night. Over the past several nights, we've been giving him less and less milk (from six ounces to four, then to two), and started just feeding him in his crib rather than taking him out to feed him.

One of the problems in doing this now is that his tooth is still coming in, and it seems to irritate him sometimes. So, he woke up at midnight. I popped his paci back in and he went to sleep. Then, he woke up at 2am. Again, gave him the paci and he went to sleep, only to wake up a half-hour later. This time, we let him cry. We shut our door, popped in earplugs, turned on the fan, and tried to sleep. I don't know how long it went on, but I remember looking at the clock at 3:15 and thinking that it's been 45 minutes. I'm pretty sure he fell asleep soon after that because I slept soundly until 4:45, when it started again. This time, it only lasted 15 minutes or so, and then Nate slept until 7:30, like usual. He was hungry when he woke up, but he was just as smiley and sweet as he always is - it was nice to know that he still loves me. We'll see how tonight goes ...