Gotcha!

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A few weeks ago I got a Baby Center weekly update on the status of Ian. It told me that as a nine-month-old he would not necessarily do well with travel and would need lots of down time. Cue the whirlwind of taking the baby to three conferences in two weeks. He went up to Oswego to hang out with librarians for a few days then flew over to Manhattan to cavort with his toddler cousins and 2000 bloggers at BlogHer. And this week we went up to DC for an archivist conference and our company outing of a Nationals baseball game. He's been a trooper through all of this but not without a few hiccups.

Yesterday, because of various circumstances, Ian only had two twenty minute naps all day. I tried nursing him and rocking him to sleep at the baseball game in an empty party suite but there was still too much going on. He went to sleep at 10:30 that night.

And woke up screaming at 11:55pm, 12:05am, 2am, 2:30am, 3:45am, 3:50am, 6am and 6:30am before actually getting up for the day at 7:30am.

I use the term "woke up" but that's not quite accurate. He would get all stiff-armed and flail around the bed crying like you'd stabbed him, but not actually be awake. He would settle back down within a few minutes each time, sometimes after walking around with him, but each time Rich and I both were ripped out of sleep to "OMG THE BABY IS CRYING WHAT'S WRONG HOLY SHIT MAKE IT STOP". Repeat each hour or so. One of my Google searches at 4am called them night terrors and I can see how they get the name because I can attest to waking up pretty terrified the first few times he did it. Ian, of course, wakes up perky and cheerful the next morning.

My father tells this joke about a pair of golfers betting on a game but one getting "two gotchas". And much like that golfer waiting for the second gotcha, each time I fell back asleep I was just waiting for the next panicked scream to wake me up.

This week should be pretty low key for him and I'm hoping the return of routine will help him out of this screaming night terror phase. I can feel myself getting threadbare from this last week of sporadic sleep.

getting comfy

When he's not screaming, he is pretty adorable when he sleeps.

Hush little baby: not your mother's lullabies

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Amazingly our son went to sleep at 8:30 this evening, which is unheard of, so I've found myself with some free time to play on the computer. As I was sorting through songs to make a mix, Rich asked if a particular song was a cover. He swore I had made him a mix with the song on it but it was a woman singing. After a bit he laughed and realized that the only time he's heard the song is when I'm singing it to Ian and this was the first he'd heard of the original.

That inspired me to share some of the gems I've been digging up. These are all songs I use to sing babies to sleep. Very few are actual children's songs but most of them can be sung in a soothing manner.

Let me know which songs are your favorite or if you have other atypical lullabies in your own repertoire.

The first song, Trouble, is the song Rich didn't recognize. I've sung that to babies for almost a decade now. Babies can be "so fat their shoes don't fit on [their] feet" so I figure it's appropriate. Here's the list of songs below, but you can click on the link to listen to the complete mix.

Hush Little Baby

1. Trouble (Little Feat) 2. Bird On The Wire (Leonard Cohen) 3. Everybody's Missing the Sun (The Gourds) 4. House at Pooh Corner (Maria Sangiolo) 5. Hi-Lilli, Hi-Lo (Leslie Caron) 6. Tennessee Waltz (Hem) 7. Love At The Five And Dime (Nanci Griffith) 8. All Of Me (Willie Nelson) 9. Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What a Wonderful World (Israel Kamakawiwo'ole) 10. Love Will Come To You (Indigo Girls)