Are you there mom? It's me, Evie

It's no secret that miss Evangeline is not the world's best sleeper.  In fact, I believe she might be in contention for one of the worst.  Of course, I love her all the same.  Perhaps too much.  If I wasn't so eager to cater to her every need, maybe we would never have ended up in this predicament in the first place.  I was so concerned with any cry when she was young that I did everything humanly possible to get her to stop and fall asleep.  Which eventually meant I taught her that she needed my help to fall asleep and go back to sleep whenever she awoke.  Training her that this is in fact not the case hasn't been easy.  Many well-intentioned friends and family members offer advice, "oh, just let her cry, it works in two days!"; "whatever you do, don't let her cry, it's incredibly cruel and teaches her the world isn't a safe place"; "well, don't let her cry uncontrolled, you know, go check on her, she'll eventually get the point".  So on and so forth.  I've come to realize Evie is a persistent little monkey and she is going to do exactly what she wants, training or not.

Yawning, back in the days when she used to sleep

Of course, it took me hiring a sleep consultant to really learn this. What a waste of money that was.  We did absolutely everything the consultant advised us to do, and Evie just did not get with the program.  We had supposedly signed up for "gentle" sleep training, which was a lot of work on our end and didn't make a bit of difference in Evie's sleep.  We've now moved into tougher methods, and Evie still has her bad naps and nights.  I don't know if she'll ever really sleep like the babies in the books.  As our pediatrician told me many months ago "you know, Evie didn't read the book that informed her she must sleep x number of hours during the day and night.   Follow her cues and she'll tell you what she needs."  He was right that she didn't read the books, but wrong in the idea that she'd tell us what she needs.  Evie is the Mike Tyson of sleep fighters.  I look on with envy at my friends photos of their children passed out in high chairs, the middle of floors, car seats, and the like.  I believe Evie has invisible toothpicks holding open her eyelids.  They will droop and she will yawn, but within one second she's back to being uber awake and eager to play.

An early wakeup from nap time 

Just yesterday I put her down for a nap.  She didn't fight the going down part.  She just had other plans for the staying down part of the equation.  She slept for 30 minutes and right as I was about to get in the shower, she woke up.  "Forget it" I thought, and hopped in the shower anyway, knowing she'd be safe in her crib.  Two minutes later, I step out to hear a loud banging noise.  Evie had figured out that her bedroom wall adjoins to our master bath and she was standing in her crib knocking on the wall.  "Are you there mom?  I hear you.  Come in here and get me!"  I mean, seriously.  What ten month old baby figures this out?  Anything she can do in order to avoid sleep, she will.  Perhaps one day this will come in handy, like in college.  But, right now, it's enough to drive me completely insane.