He FINALLY came to his senses.

We've been having a harder and harder time getting Mateo to go to sleep sort of willingly at night. The little guy is just so excited about life that he doesn't want to sleep. He'd rather stay up and whine until I can't take it anymore. Whine and flop himself on the ground. And yes, Mateo's Grandmama, he is very much a crab apple at night. Unbelievable as it is.

My husband has spent many nights coddling Mateo and snuggling him until Mateo goes to sleep, even though I oftened stated we're creating a monster (cute one, at that), and that he's never going to learn to sleep well on his own.

The other night, Mateo was just not having the snuggling my husband was trying to give him, and I heard shrieks and cries and wails from the baby monitor. Then I heard my husband say something I never thought I'd hear him say: If you don't want the comfort, then you're just going to have to cry it out.

I smiled.

It's taken almost a year, but he finally gets it, I thought.

He left Mateo's room, Mateo continued to cry and wail and scream. I knew that Mateo had a total of three hours sleep at daycare, the second nap being right before I picked him up, so I was pretty sure Mateo wasn't tired. It was only 6:30.

I went in, turned on the light, grabbed myself a snotty whining Mateo and some books, and sat with him and read. He never once showed signs of being seriously tired. So we went into the living room and watched an episode of Teletubbies, and then he went off to bed after that. Sure, there was a couple minutes of crying, but he got over it, and so did we.

Yesterday I put Mateo to bed, and he was tired and whiney as ever. Putting his PJs on was a wrestling match (I won), and reading a book was impossible (until I turned to the page with the fuzzy bunny fur that he likes to manically touch, touch, touch), and after he had his bottle, he was restless in my arms. So I stood up, kissed him goodnight, told him to have good dreams, and put him in his crib. He had other ideas about that nonsense, and he immediately tried to stand up while wailing. I put him back down and told him it's time for bed, to go to sleep, have good dreams, etc..

Then I walked out. He immediately stood up and wailed at me.

Ah, I remember the days when doing that would cause an intense amount of guilt to flow through my body. Now it's nothing. Where's that second baby we need to have so I can prove to myself how easy it is to do such things when they're 4 months and older?

I digress.

When I closed the door, I saw my husband was in the bathroom, hanging laundry. He looked at me. I said that his crying shouldn't last long because he was tired.

My husband then said something that shocked me again, but even more so: He's got to get over it - he doesn't control everything.

Whhaaaat? I did a little tap dance and said, "YOU FINALLY GET IT!!!" He just stared at me.

I guess he finally realized that losing almost an hour while holding Mateo and waiting for him to fall asleep so that he won't cry in his crib as soon as he hit the sheets was getting to be a bit much, especially with the amount of work to be done around the house (not to mention the TV shows to watch).

And I was correct; Mateo cried for maybe 5 minutes and then went to sleep.