Night vision

Night has fallen.Here's the scene: the lights in the house are all off and two hushed voices conspire the next move of their plot in specialized code. She looks at him and whispers almost inaudibly, "Eyes?" He motions back with fluttering eyelids that are almost impossible to see in the low light of the silent, flickering television. She wonders to herself: do we make our move now? Is it safe? Or should we wait? He asks softly, "now?" She decides to risk it, and nods. Both figures creep slowly up the carpeted stairs under the cover of dark, with only the shushing rustle of the carpet to betray their footsteps.

A break-in or burglary?
Nope. Just bedtime in the G home.

We recently adopted a non-pediatrician recommended bedtime ritual, which has yielded some great success. It's probably a time-limited fluke, but we'll take what we can get. And what we've gotten the past two nights has been 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. We can certainly handle creeping upstairs for that. Like his parents, Henry apparently enjoys watching television as he unwinds from his day and eats his last meal. So we've at least temporarily abandoned efforts to adopt a bedtime ritual that takes place upstairs in his room, and instead have been turning off the lights downstairs while we watch TV and feed him. We then assess how deeply he's asleep, and move him upstairs when we think he's ready to make the move without waking up. Thus, the whispered communication and inspection of eye status (open, closed, or fluttering). I feel a little guilty about this method, but really, I think we're still in survival-mode as parents (does this ever end?) and will do whatever works. It's just a kind of amusing scene, the lengths we go to, to make bedtime work. Like other parents the world over, I'm sure.

Speaking of sleep, here's a pic of Henry conked out in his swing. Love the swing.