Loving Motherhood...

...and it just got better.

This past week of taking care of Madelyn has been better than ever. I am in love with the little angel.

For those of you who are just having your first baby, you may think that it is fun at the beginning, but just wait. Friends told me that motherhood would get easier and more fun as Madelyn got older; turns out they were right.

The most recent development is that Madelyn is now sleeping for 12 hours at night. At least she has for the last 5 nights. Hopefully we can keep this up.

As Madelyn moved into her 4th month she started sleeping 7 hour stretches by herself. That didn't last long because soon after that, she developed a cold, then another, then the holidays came, and then another cold. Obviously she wasn't sleeping through the night and when the colds were gone she would still wake up every two or three hours wanting be nursed back to sleep. I avoided letting her "cry it out" because I kept thinking that she would start to sleep on her own. The whole sleeping thing became an incredible stress in my life. As you can understand, I was tired.

After much encouragement from multiple people (thank you to everyone who listened to my sleep stories over and over), we finally let her "cry it out". I was determined to at least see if letting Madelyn cry would work. About a week ago we put Madelyn to bed, she fell right asleep and woke up crying two hours later. We didn't go get her. Listening to her cry was hard. She cried for an hour and fifteen minutes before she fell asleep. I was sure she would wake up in two hours and give us another hour long cry. I was dreading listening to her crying for the rest of the night, but I was shocked when I woke up the next morning and found she had slept until morning. A similar scenario happened for the next two nights with a little less crying each night. On the fourth night, she went to bed and didn't make a peep for 12 hours. Wahoo!! As I said, she has slept for 12 hours through the night for the past 5 nights and her mommy and daddy are elated.

This past week has been fabulous. Madelyn has been happier while she is awake. Her personality has become more cheerful and dynamic, and when it is time for her nap she goes down without crying (for the most part). She sat on my lap through most of sacrament this past week. Normally we had to walk around with her because she was squirmy 15 minutes into sacrament. It has just been a ton of fun to take care of her this week!

Here is a picture of the little angel sleeping.