Up all night

I didn't blog about it at the time, but several weeks ago, Thomas and I bravely got rid of the 10:30 pm bottle. We give the boys their bottle at 7:30 and put them down for the night. We did a transition and were giving them just 2 oz in their 10:30 bottle for about 2 weeks to see how they did and they continued to sleep through the night. So we went for it. We put them to bed at 7:30 and didn't look back until 7:30 am. They did great! That was probably a month ago and we are loving life. We can go to bed at 8:30 if we want to! That never happens...but it could! Stokes sometimes still wakes up but usually goes back to bed after a little rocking.

Last Saturday night, yes, the night before the big baptism, Stokes had a bit of a rough night. And when I say Stokes had a rough night, I mean that Stokes, Thomas and I all had a bad night. Even MaSha and Tara heard him throughout the night while they were staying with us. Stokes wanted to be held. All. Night. Long. As soon as we thought he might be asleep we would put him back in his crib and the screaming and crying would go back to a maximum level 10. I eventually got worn down and decided that I would sleep on the recliner holding him. I try not to do that because I don't want it to become a habit but I got desperate. So the recliner method worked for a while and then he started crying again. I gave him to Thomas who tried to go to sleep holding him. That worked for a while and then we heard the crying once again. It pretty much went like this most of the night until around 5 am MaSha offered to take him because she was awake anyways. Thomas and I had gotten very little sleep (you can imagine how distraught I was because I wanted all of us to be well rested for the baptism and wanted everything to be PERFECT!) so we took a quick snooze before we had to get up and start getting ready.

You know, I thought a couple of times about getting some sort of pain reliever for Stokes, but I didn't for several reasons. One - I had never given him medicine before and didn't have the dosage chart from the Dr. yet. Two - the medicine is located in the nursery and I would have to turn on the light to find it and read the directions and I would be risking waking the other two. Three - I was nervous because I was so tired and not thinking straight...which is not the best time to administer medicine. We toughed it out and made it through but I think we were all exhausted on Sunday. The excitement of the day kept us going!

The culprit behind this disastrous night? Our suspicions were confirmed on Sunday morning. It was...drumroll, please...A TOOTH! Stokie got his first tooth on Mother's Day and Baptism day. I've tried to get a few pictures of this little baby tooth. Can you see it?