The last time I posted a blog Nyima was just turning 6 months old.  Now she’s almost 10 months old.  My, time goes by swiftly.

Today is the beginning of the end of the co-sleeping arrangement.  Nyima weaned herself at about 8 1/2 months or so.  She was digging on a sippy cup one day, and I thought hey, maybe I’ll try a bottle again, and surprise!  She liked it.  She liked it so much, in fact, that she stopped liking the hoots.  So she went from nursing every 4 hours or so and a couple of times at night to not nursing at all in a matter of about 3 weeks.  And I never denied her a thing!  She just stopped wanting it.

Anyhoo.  So now she’s 10 months, crawling, pulling up, walking when we hold her hands, the whole shebang.  Unfortunately, what that means for co-sleeping is that as soon as she wakes at all we have to run into the bedroom so she doesn’t crawl herself off the edge of the bed.  She’s figured us out, too.  We have a video monitor, and I’ll watch her sit up, turn look at the bedroom door and wait for us.  If we don’t show, she makes a little cry, then turns and waits for us.  Then she gets on all fours and starts to crawl, and stops and waits for us.  Lately she’s just gone straight to crawling since she knows that gets us there right away.

I was going to wait awhile before I stopped the co-sleeping.  I like it.  I like it very much.  We got a king size bed so we’re all in the same bed now, it’s much better.  She sleeps between us, sometimes horizontally, with her feet on me and her hands on her dad.  Lately since she’s been teething she’s taken to sleeping ON me for half the night, the upper part of her draped over my stomach or chest and her legs curled up on my side.  It’s quite wonderful and snuggly, and I’m going to miss it horribly.

But.  I do think it’s time.  She’s getting more and more so if she wakes up she can’t go back to sleep unless one of us is there so she can rub our arm.  Which is also very cute and wonderful, but I feel like I might be holding her back from at least learning how to get herself to sleep.  Since we’re so afraid she might crawl off the bed we can’t just let her get herself back to sleep in our bed.  And so, it’s time for the crib.

I guess technically we’re still co-sleeping since the crib will still be in our room.   I don’t see that changing anytime soon.  Its’ one thing to have her a foot away, it’s another to have her in a different room.  That seems a bit much still, I can’t imagine her being all by herself in a big room so early.  So I figure this is the best of both worlds – she’s still close enough that she feels she’s with us, but she is a little more independent and will learn how to soothe herself too.  Not that we wont’ be there to help.  And not that she wont’ find herself in our bed from time to time…

So this is how we started.  I took off one side of the crib and strapped it to our bed and did a side-car thing for a few days.  It’s good, but we still run into the same problem of not being able to leave her alone, because she can still crawl onto our bed.  So today I put the side of the crib back on, and put her down for her afternoon nap in her crib.  She was wide awake, I gave her her bottle and kept my hand on her tummy to keep her from flipping over and crawling about.  She did her usual little bit of crying because she’s mad that I won’t let her turn over, but she laid in the crib very calmly, closed her eyes, and went to sleep.  She’s been asleep for about an hour now.  I figure we’ll put her to bed in her crib tonight, if she gets up and moves about that’s fine, but we won’t go in unless she starts crying.  I don’t want her to feel totally abandoned, and don’t like the ‘cry it out’ idea.  So I won’t let her get too upset, but I also want to give her a chance to do this herself.  So we’ll see how it goes, and we’ll see who cracks first and puts her in bed – me or Jason.