This has been one exhausting week. Poor Ethan is exposed to yet another brand new environment and I think his unfamiliar surroundings and especially his new room has caused another bout of separation anxiety. Bob, the lucky duck, is back in SF (so jealous!) for a business trip so who gets to deal with the hardcore wailing at 3 AM? It's all me baby.
While before Ethan would always fall asleep immediately at bedtime (because we have established a pretty good bedtime routine ever since he was 2 months old) he now tries to keep himself awake and us in the room. It has been taking over a hour now for him to fall asleep for the night and he has started to wake up during the night as well and of course it takes a long time to get him back to sleep after he wakes up. If I am in the room with him he is okay because he can see me, but he will crawl to whatever side of the crib is nearest me and pull up/sit/repeat for what seems like forever. Then he will finally get so tired that he will lie down and just as he is falling asleep he will wake himself up to check to see if I am still there. So I now pat his back to reassure him of my presence until he falls asleep. I know I shouldn't encourage him and just reassure him and then leave the room, but I feel so bad that he is going through this and I think this separation anxiety really was triggered by our move. I think Ethan is finally getting better now though as today he let me walk of out his room and fell immediately to sleep for his naps. We will see how nighttime goes. The one bright spot is now Ethan is sleeping from 7 PM to 7 AM (even though he started to wake up once or twice a night) whereas before he slept from 6 PM to 5 AM. The 5 AM shift was killer and I'm really hoping his new sleep schedule sticks.
So if you are like me and can use a smile here is a video clip of Ethan playing with our laptop mouse (for some reason he found it hilarious if we tried to tug the mouse away from him).
His laugh is SOOOOO cute! Definitely made ME smile! :) Sorry about the separation anxiety issue. Hopefully now that you've settled in to your final destination, he will feel safe and sound in his new surroundings and not need so much reassurance that you are still there. It must be scary having his environment change so much so he is making sure you don't disappear. Very sweet, he loves you so much and wants you to always bet there, but very tiring too! 7-7 is awesome, hope it keeps up! Katie is needing less sleep now that she's getting older, so it's been 7:30-5:30 this week, ack! No FUN! She's such a sweetie, I can't get upset with her though!
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