Zzzzzzzz...

Liam slept through the night! We have been working on this more this week. Well, at least I have. But not so much for my benefit. I will still have to wake up at night to pump regardless of whether he sleeps or not, unless I'd like to wake up wading in my own river. There's also the need to stockpile as much breastmilk as I possibly can. For what? VEGAS in January :). But I have been working to get Liam to sleep through the night more for Ryan's benefit. Now that I am back to working the night shift in the NICU, my husband, who already stays up too late and wakes up too early, needs as much sleep as he can get. And it's not as convenient for Ryan to wake up with Liam at night. He doesn't have the ready-made stuff...he actually has to go through the process of warming the bottles. Our two previous nights of training didn't go so well. I would wake up when I heard Liam, turn of the monitor, and set the alarm for 10-15 minutes. In theory, he was supposed to learn to put himself back to sleep without eating. And I guess in theory he did. Both nights Mommy, at some point, fell asleep without an alarm set and with the monitor off. And both nights, I awoke in a panic, realizing my poor baby boy was probably all too sad his Mommy never came to rescue him. Both nights, though, he was sound asleep at the point where I woke up, so who's to say he didn't just sleep through the night? Well, at least for the second night I assume he pitched a bit of a fit, because the next morning I found he had also rolled over for the first time, from back to front, probably in such a fit that he was trying to fling himself from his own crib to find me. But, in the end, something worked. My little boy finally got a long, peaceful nights sleep all on his own.

All giggles? Not so much...

So...Liam laughed out loud today. Surprising, because it's a whole month and a half before Evie ever laughed out loud. Sure, it was at Daddy at first, this morning before he left for work. But this afternoon, Mommy was the comedian. She was even funnier as she nearly killed herself running around trying to collect camcorder and tripod supplies, being home alone with the baby at the time, to record the event on film. By the time everything was all set up, there was not a laugh to be heard for miles. I spent a good five minutes making funny faces and animal noises, clapping and jumping, trying to get just one giggle. But the joke was on me. I believe that inital laugh was just his insight into the fact he knew he could make mommy make a fool of herself. It's obvious that the smallest member of our family is holding all the cards right now.