Here's how Allie goes to sleep

Bedtime is pretty funny here. Some nights if we follow Allie's cues right, she's still awake when we put her to bed. She'll stay up an play for a bit talking and laughing all the way. I wish I had a camera in there to see what she does in her crib. But we just have the monitor to hear her. And its funny how quickly she'll fall asleep. She's talking and laughing up a storm and then just like that, silence.

On the other end of the spectrum, we get to put cranky Allie to bed. When she was really small, an eye rub meant it was time to move toward the bed. Now as she's mobile it seems that once we get to the eye rub, its too late. So we try to get her dressed for bed early to avoid the crying on the changing table. Often she'll cry in bed for a few minutes or several before she falls asleep.

But I have to share last night's bedtime to show just how Allie can entertain. She doesn't really have a consistent nap time in daycare but she usually takes two naps. However, yesterday she took only a single hour-long nap. So we expected her to be ready for bed quickly after we got home. We fed her solids right away and got her in the sleeper and went downstairs to play for a few minutes. Those minutes turned into about an hour, in which she would take some of her bottle and when not drinking, we'd just be loud. She claps and is always moving. It was fun.

So we still hadn't had an eye rub and I decided it was time at about 8. We went upstairs still keeping her wound up and Doug said he didn't think she'd go to sleep. But the minute Doug left the room and I was going to finish feeding the bottle, Allie's lights just went out.

She actually drank most of her bottle and was sound asleep. So I sat her upright to burp, and with her eyes half open, head flopping around and a half smile on her face, she looked drunk. It was so funny I just couldn't stop laughing. So I lifted her to go to the crib and she's sound asleep on my shoulder. She often wakes up as I put her in the crib though, and she did this time; she smiled and rolled over and started crawling to me. She still had a little bit in her bottle so I was going to give her some. So I took her out of the crib, and she went to sleep on my shoulder again! So I put her back in bed and high-tailed it out of the room so she'd stay asleep and quit trying to play.

I love how Allie constantly entertains us.