The Secret

Thanks in part to a friend of mine, I think I have discovered the secret to not being woken up by Emily in the night. My friend suggested putting a baby gate in her door (rather than ours, which we did for a while when I thought the labs were waking her up). I tried this and on night one she still wailed for us--although when it was around 6am, she did go back and just play in her room/fall back asleep. This was the morning that Jon and I slept in until almost 9!!! I'm definitely okay with her entertaining herself in the mornings. But that didn't solve the problem of the crying in the middle of the night. I decided that what she was usually asking for was juice--she can find all of her other important items (pacifier, duck, duck blanket, baby, books, whatever else she might want to pile in there), but she never seems to be able to find her cup, which often rolls under the bed or is buried beneath the other stuff. So I went in after she fell asleep, filled the cup with water, and balanced it on the gate. At 3am when I got up to feed Ellen, the cup was gone, but I hadn't been disturbed. I felt like I was hunting a wild animal... So I found it again, and once again perched it on the gate. When I got up at 6:30 to feed Ellen again (after the initial 7 hours, she can't wait as long to eat again), the cup was once again missing. So I repeated my steps. This has worked for four nights in a row, and this morning the cup was only missing at the 3am feeding. Hooray!!