We knew we were in trouble at 4:00 this morning!

That's when Noah decided to start his day. Yes, 4:00 and yes, that's A.M. Now, we love Noah, and Noah has many, many great qualities. But being a good sleeper has never been one of those qualities. Some kids come into this world sleeping through the night. For some, it takes a while longer. But even at the worst, most babies are sleeping through the night by a year. Not Noah. Noah has defied all the odds and at two, still does not sleep through the night most nights. In fact, Noah's 5 month old brother is a better sleeper than Noah is and I suspect Adam will reach that wonderful milestone of consistently sleeping through the night before Noah does.

Now this seems bad until you realize how far we've come and how unusual last night was. Until a few weeks before Adam was born, Noah was still in our bed. Why? Because he'd wake several times a night and it was much quicker to get him back to sleep in our bed. We could get to him before he was fully awake, snuggle him and get him to fall back to sleep. Sometimes it comes down to survival. So now he's in his own bed, in his own room and waking once a night, at most, and sometimes actually sleeping all the way through the night. Really, we've made huge progress. It's a very gradual process but we are moving forward.

See, until Adam was two months old, I would be waking up with Noah 2-3 times a night and Adam every two hours. No wonder I lived my first few months in a sleep induced coma. That was hard. Nights like last night just prove to us how far we've come. And we have to keep reminding ourselves that it'll only get easier, that one day, it'll happen and Noah will be a good sleeper... or he won't.

A little secret nobody ever told me... contrary to what the experts tell us, good sleep patterns are not earned. Nor are they the result of good parenting. I don't think it really has anything to do with us. Just like kids come with all sorts of personalities, kids also come with all sorts of sleep tendencies. My other kids have all been good sleepers. Noah just isn't. At some point, Noah will either outgrow this tendency or he'll be old enough to go downstairs, pop in a movie for himself and grab some breakfast. I'm not sure which way it'll play out right now, but I'm sure that it'll pass, one way or another, just like everything else does and at some point, this will be a distant, albeit foggy, sleepy memory.

I will say that sleepy kisses from a little two year old boy are very sweet, even at 4:00 in the morning, and I have the rest of my life to sleep through the night.