Sleeping

I wanted to write about our experiences with sleep thus far for all those who come after us:

For the first week and a half or so, the boys would cry out in the middle of the night, never really waking up, but crying and moving about, and it was really hard for us to see then so distraught. John Eyob was much worse than Ryan Ephrem. In Ethiopia, Mike, John, and Ryan all slept in the main bed with me in the toddler bed pushed against the big bed. This allowed us to keep the boys from falling out of bed and we were right next to them to comfort them (holding them and saying "Ah-she, ah-she"). We also discovered on the second night in Ethiopia that if we gave a five minute warning (said each boys name and then once they looked at us, held up five fingered saying, "five minutes until sleep" and pointed into the bedroom and made a motion of closing our eyes and resting our head on our hands to symbolize sleep) bedtime went MUCH better!

In our house the boys share a bedroom and a double bed. In Ethiopia they had small toddler beds, five or six in a row, brightly colored and with sides. They had blankets (as we saw someone napping when we visited) but I don't think they used pillows. We didn't see any when we visited and the boys spent the first few weeks sleeping right below the pillows. Now they start on their pillows but are such restless sleepers, they have moved around and are off the pillows by morning. The first night home, we started the boys in their own room and bed and they seemed to be alright with this so that is how things have stayed. Ryan Ephrem, our younger son and night owl, at first really struggled with going to sleep at night. After I added a small, changing color night light, things got much better. For about the first month, I (and Mike if he wasn't working or sleeping from work) would lie with the boys for nap or bedtime until they fell asleep. Our night time routine now consists of brushing teeth, using the bathroom, and looking through board books - neither boy was too interested in books when we arrived home but have since come to enjoy looking through board books. (Their favorites are God Knows All About Me and Goodnight Moon.) We are moving on to Little Golden books this week and I'm really excited to see their reaction. After we put books away, I turn on a CD of music and the night light, turn off the room light, and lay in bed with the boys for a little while. Last week we began to name all the the things we are thankful to Jesus for. I also have begun to tell the boys after about ten minutes that Mommy is going to do her house work now. We say love you and bye and I almost never have to come back in the room after that.

John Eyob will still cry out during the night and wakes up four to five times a week in the middle of the night and comes into my room. I will lead him back to bed and lie with him for a few minutes which is about how long he takes to fall back to sleep. If he wakes up around 6am, I'll let him get in bed with me and he has always fallen back to sleep until about 7:30 or 8:00 - yeah!

Other thoughts:
Neither boy has ever been interested in sleeping with stuffed animals (although they do love calling them babies!) but they do have small, soft baby blankets that we bought. Even though they are not babies, I still wanted them when they are older the have had a baby blanket from when they were little. We brought them to Ethiopia with us to use as a comfort if needed and they traveled on the plane with us. The boys do like to be covered with them at night.
Their restlessness leads to lots of opportunities to fall out of bed - even with chairs and a guard rail on the bed! However they've never been hurt or even woken up.

We feel INCREDIBLY BLESSED to have had really such an non-challenging time with the boys and sleep.