Adopting the Spectrum: First Sleep Over

Hannah had her first sleep over last weekend. We kept her best friend Eveyln overnight so that Sarah could surpise Jason with an early birthday present. The girls did great! I was mildly concerned about getting them both to bed by myself (Kyle's been working nights and weekends 4-midnight for the last few weeks) since Hannah doesn't always like to be alone and Evelyn needs calm and quiet to fall asleep and because of Hannah's issues with screaming herself to sleep. So, my plan was to really talk up to Hannah that Evelyn needed to go to bed (she goes to bed an hour before Hannah does) and emphasize that she needed to be really really quiet. I told her that she would get to watch a movie while I put Evelyn in her crib. I wasn't convinced that this would work, but it was the best idea I could come up with. Hannah was AWESOME and sat and watched her movie quietly and didn't move an

inch until I got back when she said, "Shh. . . Eva's sleeping." Evelyn of course went right to sleep, she has NO PROBLEMS going to sleep on her own thank heavens. Hannah finished her movie and had her snack and then it was time for her to go to bed. I decided to not chance letting Hannah cry and wake up Evelyn so the plan was to rock her until she feel asleep (no matter how long it took) and avoid the whole issue of screaming. I reminded Hannah that we needed to be really quiet because Evelyn was sleeping and that we couldn't cry at all because that would wake her up. I told her that she needed to be sure that Ernie didn't cry and wake Evelyn up either. She held him tight and we read two books (one more than normal) and then sang our songs. I shouldn't have worried about how long it would take to rock Hannah to sleep because she was asleep before I finished her first song (we usually sing her two)! She must have played so hard with Evelyn that she was beat.

Speaking of Ernie, we have been making some progress in the Ernie department. I've done some serious talking up of Ernie and it seems to have helped because she's been asking to hold him and let him look at the pictures in her books before bedtime and naptime. She's been tucking him under her arm while we read and sing and always asks for me to sing Jesus Loves Ernie :) Usually when I put her down to sleep she tosses him towards his special pillow, but every now

and then she will actually hold onto him and a few times I've gone into check on her on a night when she's chucked Ernie when I layed her down and she was actually holding him while she was sleeping. So, maybe just maybe Ernie will be a help. We've had some good days and some bad days as far as naps and bedtimes are concerned. Today was a bad day. She DID NOT want to even go into the room for her nap and was back to not wanting to let Ernie see the pictures, but eventually she held him. She wouldn't settle down though. She fidgeted throughout the whole story and her songs. Settling down is usually not her problem-it's actually falling asleep once she's in the crib that is the problem. Today though she screamed and screamed and screamed. She is finally asleep now though so I'm at least happy she'll get some rest. An old problem with sleep is also back again too. She's back to waking several times a night in an absolute panic. I'm almost positve she's having nightmares because it goes from silence to an ear splitting scream and she'

s standing bolt upright. As soon as I go in there and say shhh and touch her she crumples to the bed and is almost immediately asleep again, like she wasn't even really awake to begin with. It's been happening every night for the past week at 11pm, midnight and then a few more times throughout the night. I know it's hard on her not getting a full night's sleep and it's definitely hard on me too since my meds make me pretty groggy if I'm woken in the middle of the night. Hopefully this will soon pass like it did 6 months ago.

Hannah has been getting really into eating like a big girl and loves to use her new plates. We recently started trying to teach her how to use a fork (we've tried before, but were unsuccessful because she would get way too frustrated and start throwing food!) and she LOVES it. She's actually pretty good at it already. This makes me happy

because if we can start keeping food on a plate or in a bowl and always use an utensil then this will cut down on cleanup time after meals and snacks dramatically. That would be nice :) Now I just wonder when I need to start phasing out the sippy cups. I've attempted the use of a big girl cup with her a few times and she's actually not too bad, but I guess I'm still too scared to let her go completely on her own yet like I was with the soup and the spoons!

Hannah's play has been evolving lately to include a ton of pretend play. She likes to put a blanket over her climber and pretend it's a zebra house. Don't ask me why it's a zebra house, but it is. Sometimes it's a zebra cage or zebra crate, but ALWAYS a zebra. This was NOT an idea I put into her head, but I do get pulled in to play the zebra a lot :) She's really into bear cawling around th house and pretending to be lots of different animals and she wants me to do it too. I have to

get down and follow her and make the appropriate noises. The problem is that sometimes I don't know what the appropriate noises are! Anyone know what sounds a camel or a giraffe make? Another thing she loves to do is play a game she calls Super Grover. She watched this Sesame Street video from the library where grover was teaching kids to be a super hero like he was, Super Grover, and they had to pretend to put on a helmet and cape and then put their arms out in front of them and run around saying woosh, woosh, woosh like they were flying. Apparently Hannah really liked this idea because one day (about a week after we had taken the video back to the bookmobile) she came up to me and said, "Mommy play super grover" She wanted a cape which I quickly decided would be one of her old receiving blankets (I had to have one too by the way) and then she grabbed one of her little people animals and handed me one too. We had to pretend to fly around in circles in the house making wooshing sounds and holding our animal. With each trip around the house we had to stop in the library and switch to a new animal! It's pretty cute and it can keep her entertained for sometimes 20 minutes at a time which is nice! I get some exercise too which is nice since we're stuck in the house so much now that it's cold.

Hannah is still really into dancing and her favorite 2 songs at the moment are Day-O and Jump in the Line by Harry Belafonte. She loves to jump around and sing them and of course dance to them with Daddy. She knows they are on the IPOD so sometimes she will even try to go start it herself when she wants to listen to her songs. We've got several videos of her dancing to them so now I just have to get them uploaded to google so that you can all watch them and laugh. :)

Speaking of videos. Here's one of Hannah reading with Grandpa from a long time ago that I uploaded and just never got around to posting on her blog. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2804949158266003932&hl=en