90 minutes...

We just passed the 90-minute mark on getting Caroline to go to sleep tonight. She's screaming as I type. This is getting ridiculous. Naptime went ever so smoothly today, and after a quick cuddle in the rocking chair, she barely fussed when I directed her attention to her books in her crib and promised to leave her door open. She was asleep within a few minutes.

Tonight was a different story. I know she's tired. I waited five hours between the time she woke up from her nap and bedtime. I did the same thing I did this afternoon. She was quiet for about 45 minutes, and I thought she had gone to sleep, but then I started hearing her call for us. I tried in vain to ignore it, and when she worked herself into a frenzy, I considered that she might have a dirty diaper. So I went in...nope...she looked at me and pointed to the rocking chair and said, "WOK." Now I know that if I picked her up and rocked her, she would be asleep in 15-20 minutes, but this is a bad habit getting started. This little girl has quite peacefully putting herself to sleep for almost all of the nine months we've had her home, with the exception of the first couple of weeks and a week or two here and there of illness or tooth-cutting. THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR THREE WEEKS! I am tired. I am tired of hearing my poor baby cry, and I am tired of getting nothing done at all...by the time I can check out for the day, I'm too tired to get anything done.

I've tried to figure out the rhyme or reason she's having a hard time...I have no solid clues. She is cutting a two-year molar. She could be having separation anxiety. She could be afraid of the dark, although this has happened a few times at nap time, too. She has a cold, but that just started over the weekend. So here I am, nearly 15 years into parenting (and two previous years of full-time babysitting for two baby boys), and I'm not sure what to do. I do know that I am creating BAD sleep habits by rocking her to sleep every time or letting her sleep with us. It's one thing if she's sick or occasionally wakes up from bad dream, but every day or so??? I talked to my pediatrician about it. She doesn't have a lot of experience with international adoption, but she said that she felt very confident that from the 472 visits we've had since we've been home (kidding...slightly...we do have four kids, though...) she could say Caroline has attached very well and would not suffer from crying it out. It's still tough to know the right thing to do. I think it can vary so much from child to child and situation to situation. Instead of doing a lot of research based on educated guessing, I'm trying to follow my heart and my instincts and figure out what God wants me to do.

Tonight I've decided that tonight I'm going to try to stick it out and let her cry. Jon's up late working on a project, and Mickey has miraculously been able to sleep through the racket. THe girls are just now going to bed, so maybe she'll give in soon. Say a little prayer for us...