Daniel is three months old today. Some days I can't believe how fast the time has flown and other days it feels like he's always been with us. Then there are the days when he doesn't sleep...

This has been an ongoing issue and it's getting worse. A few times at around 10 weeks he actually slept through the night (9/9:30 to about 5:30/6 a.m.) He never did it two nights in a row but he did it three or four times in a 10-day span.

Those were the days.

For the last few nights he's been getting up to eat twice a night and fussing in need of pacifier replacement even more often. This constant up and down from the warmth and comfort of our own bed is both physically and mentally exhausting. It's hard to deal with feelings of hostility toward your own beautiful child. But when he's squawking at 3 a.m. and I realize the only solution will be to get up and feed him...again...I'm not happy. Last night at about that time I declared, "This is his LAST night in the cradle."

We've kept him in the cradle in our room this long for a couple of reasons. First of all, he's still a noisy sleeper even when he's not crying. There are enough grunts and snorts that we thought he'd wake Edward if we put them in the room together. Secondly, we are planning to try to sell our house again (probably starting next week) and as we've worked on decluttering, it seems counter-productive to set up the full-sized crib in Edward's already-crowded room.

The cradle has a stabilizing screw to keep it from fully rocking back and forth, but it still rocks a bit when Daniel shifts himself in it. I think this has been startling him awake. Or at least, that's what I'm telling myself in order to face another night. After my 3 a.m. fit, John took the cradle off it's stand and set it on the floor while I was feeding Daniel. We laid him there and he slept until we had to wake him to leave this morning a little after 7. That's his longest stretch in about two weeks. Tonight we're hoping for a repeat or even an extended remix.

Another part of the sleep problem is that, just like Edward as an infant, Daniel doesn't sleep well in bed during the day. He'll sleep in the car seat or if I'm holding him, but as soon as I put him in bed he wakes up crying. His best afternoon sleep comes if we go outside to play and I carry him in the Baby Bjorn. If he doesn't get that hour or so late in the afternoon, he has a major meltdown during or right after dinner because he's so exhausted he just can't function at any other level. The only way to calm him then is to feed him and he falls asleep. But if he starts his longest block of sleep at 7 p.m. there's no way he'll make it all the way 'til morning. So it's still a balancing act, and we'll keep working toward that elusive sleep goal. One day soon we may actually awake refreshed.

Tonight we had an eerie flashback to two years ago when our tornado sirens started blaring around 7 p.m. I was just getting Daniel out of his bath and John and Edward were playing. Edward was concerned about the "whistle" but we told him it was just to let us know there was lots of rain on the way. We turned on our local weather and saw that the storm was tracking comfortably to the west of us so we did not have to bundle the boys down to the basement. Daniel would have been fine in the car seat, but keeping Edward contained would have been a Herculean task. There's only a very small section of our basement, under the stairs, that is away from windows and doors. Another reason to look forward to a new house one day soon!