I have been trying to encourage Bean to be a good sleeper for a while now. If she is with us (even just in the same room), she can go to sleep with relative ease. However, we have been in the habit of rocking her to sleep at night. Now, she won’t sleep on her own.

Don’t judge. It didn’t seem like a bad thing to hold and rock my sweet daughter. As it turns out – this is doing horrible things to our daughter (what those horrible things are, I wonder about now). Something about independence and self-reliance blah blah blah. So, we are trying to “sleep train”. This is one of those BS terms used to describe horrible chores parents must do. I say it is BS because we are now doing it.

What do I do when I get conflicting information from “the books” – I ask the doctor. He is the person who I use as my ultimate tie breaker. The doc says we are doing it wrong – so I will accept it.

What is sleep training? You ask… it is child abuse. Well – it is if you ask the Bean. What you do is you get her nice and tired, do the normal bed time routine, put her in bed, tuck her in and kiss her good night and leave.

Sounds easy, right.

Wrong.

What follows are the tears. The screaming. The pleading. The torture.

You are supposed to go in and make sure all is well at increasingly longer intervals of time until she has successfully fallen asleep. Again. This sound like it wouldn’t be that bad. But it is. She sounds SOOO very pitiful and it is breaking my heart. I started to wonder where “sleep training” (the happy little thing to encourage independence) crosses the line into child abuse. I am told by the books, doctor, other parents, etc. that it is harder on the parents than it is on the child… but neither hubby nor I were standing in bed SCREAMING as though our toes were being cut off one at a time.

We had our well baby appointment today. I confirmed that this screaming was normal and it was fine. He assured me that it would all get better. I will call him as a witness when we are jailed for child abuse.

I can’t believe it.

I just can’t believe it.

2009 came to an end, as did Bean’s first year. The year flew by so quickly and I am having a hard time grasping exactly how much has happened. Everything she has ever done for the first time has happened this year. That list is long.

Everything I have learned about being a mommy, I’ve learned this year. I was so very wrong about many things, but luckily Bean didn’t know the difference and we learned together.

Here is the wrap up of this year:

11 months

10 months

9 months

8 months

7 months

6 months

5 months

4 months

3 months (daycare begins)

2 months (ish)

1 month (ish)

This month has been a continual improvement of all previous skills. She is walking more and better than ever. She learned how to climb an entire flight of stairs without assistant (a lot of protection on the way up, but no actual help).

She had her first photo shoot – so I have “one year” pictures. She was in a better mood than expected, so they turned out great.

We went on a plane back home for Christmas and had 6 assents and 6 descents — all in all she did great. The last one she fussed, but I blame my own bad timing with a needed diaper change when we should have been encouraging sleep instead of waking her up.

As it turns out, she doesn’t get the whole “time change” thing. There is a two hour time difference. In bean world, this translates into going to bed at 6 or 6:30 pm and waking up for the day at 4:30 or 5 am. That isn’t counting the many times she woke up during the night. The days were going between family to family, so her schedule was so messed up that she didn’t sleep well at all. I had a plan to solve this problem, but a four day delay and lack of planning for time change issues pretty much threw all my grand ideas out the window.

Our Itty girl died this month, so the one dog friend Bean had is gone. Bubba has shown that she doesn’t want to be friends with the bean, so I am especially sad that the dog that loved Bean is gone.

As far as my “Mommy paranoia” – I am getting so much better! I haven’t even read “the books” for what to expect next or what I need to worry about. I still read the newsletters, but the actual books are going unread. I’m not sure if it is because I found plenty of things to worry about on my own, or if I am more confident. I guess it could go either way.

Bean got her first (I am sure of many) knots on her head. While at Grandma’s, she tripped over her feet and fell into a dresser. I worried enough to call the doctor, but didn’t cry myself. I consider this a success. It was a small knot with a bruise, but the next day it was just a bruise that you had to look for to see.

The very last night of her first year was celebrated in our usual fashion – Fancy New Year’s. She slept, but I thought of her often. Her birthday party is to follow – all the fam is here and we enjoy traditional New Year’s feast (thanks to “B”) and the party is basically simple. I hope she stays awake and is able to practice the new trick we have been practicing… blowing. I hear it is unlikely for her to actually blow out her first candle, but I have been trying to teach it to her anyway. I’ll report if it worked out or not.

Today is 01-01-10 and my girl is turning 1. I am sure if you look it up, that means something… I think it means that both she and we (hubby and I) managed to survive her first year. I look forward to everything 2010 has to offer. Hopefully it won’t be quite as hectic.