the funny sisters sleep

Today marks one week of ... drumroll please ... Molly & Clara completely sharing their room. That's right. Clara now sleeps - all night long - in the same room as Molly. The transition was amazingly smooth. So smooth, in fact, that I kept thinking it was only a fluke and chaos would erupt soon. But (knock on wood), one week later, Clara still only wakes up at night when she has a poop (granted, she seems to poop in her sleep almost every night, but that's another story), and Molly seems mostly unfazed by her new room mate.

In fact, Molly is incredibly sweet with Clara. In the morning, when Clara wakes up for the day and is crying, I hear her telling her "it's okay, your sister's here", and then she comes to get us and to tell us it's morning and time to get up. And Clara seems to absolutely adore sleeping in the same room as Molly. She still sometimes cries a bit (+/- 2 seconds) when I put her down, but mostly she just babbles to herself and watches her sister. I know down the road there will be other challenges to room sharing, but my fears of this transition have been allayed.

It started a few weeks ago when we finally let Clara go to sleep on her own (aka "cry it out", "Ferberize", or teaching "self soothing"). With the support/coaching of her daycare provider, Akiva, I worked out a plan and (this was the hardest part) stuck to it. It was brutal for me, but worked, just like everyone said it would. And after our trip to Carmel, I figured that was the perfect opportunity to move her crib.

Part of me wonders if we should have done this ages ago, but then part of me thinks maybe it wouldn't have worked so smoothly ages ago. Clara's at a very different stage now than she was even two months ago. And it was clear to me after the first two nights of letting her cry that the crying was much more of a "I'm pissed because you didn't do what I wanted you to do" cry than a "I'm scared or sad" cry. Which made me feel better.

Here's to me & Zach getting our room back, and all of us enjoying a long nights sleep!

Photos: From the days when Clara would only sleep in our bed or in our arms...