Nightlife

Elaina looks ready to party in this picture, but she's actually turned out to be a very good sleeper. She still doesn't take naps very well--so her mom gets very little time to herself during the day--but she sleeps about 11 hours a night!

Our nightly ritual is: I come home from work and we play for awhile, giving Mommy a few minutes to herself. Then, I give Elaina her nighttime bottle and put her to bed.


She's slept in her crib for weeks now. With all the preparation we've had for adopted kids and bedtime issues, I would never have pushed the issue of her sleeping in the crib. She's a roller and a climber, though, which makes the crib seem safer. Fortunately, she actually seems to like it. You can't really rock her to sleep. I hold her for about 30 seconds in her darkened room, and she starts to whimper and lean towards her crib.

Once I put her down, she rolls and kicks, sits back up, falls over, stands up, flops down, kicks some more.... She also does this kind of funny routine where she has her head down but walks her feet around until her butt is high enough in the air that she's off-balance and falls over on her side.

I have a little game I play where I rate each evening by how many times she sits up or stands up. For some reason, this is like Olympic gymnastics to me. Tonight was impressive--no standing, and only one time sitting up. A solid performance from the little girl from Seoul. The Chinese judge gave her an 8, but it was solid 9s and 10s otherwise. On two occasions, a couple weeks ago, she "stuck the landing", meaning I put her down and she didn't even roll over, just fell asleep--solid 10s across the board.

Getting Elaina up in the morning is even better (though, honestly, that more often falls to Heidi). Elaina normally wakes up and is talking and being a pleasant little person in her crib, waiting for someone to come and get her. When you do, she smiles and pats your back when you pick her up. It's actually worth getting out of bed for...not so much that I want to steal the joy of getting up with her from Heidi all the time, mind you, but it is nice.