Sleep training continues. With visible improvement every day.

Friday night, Penny only cried for about five minutes before succumbing to sleep - and once again sleeping all night. Saturday night, she cried for maybe thirty seconds - she'd stopped before I finished my one-line note in the log, at any rate. And last night, she didn't cry at all - some whimpering right as Matt put her down, but no crying.

It's not all roses. For the last two nights, she's woken in the middle of the night, and that's not nearly as easy as going to bed initially. Still, we can see improvement there, too. Saturday night, she cried for about forty-five minutes; last night, it was less than 20.

We'd thought at first that we wouldn't bother trying to sleep-train Penny to go down for naps. Part of sleep-training is establishing a regular schedule and routine, and we can enforce neither when she's at daycare.

But Saturday morning, she had been yawning and rubbing her eyes for almost two hours, and got fussy if we tried to hold her on our laps for a nap, so we finally said, "Let's put her in the crib and see what happens."

What happened was that she didn't so much as whimper. She talked to her toys for about ten minutes, and then conked out. She whined a little when we put her down for the afternoon nap, but it wasn't a scene.

Same thing on Sunday - no real fussing. When she was demonstrably tired, we'd put her in her crib, and she'd roll around and talk quietly to herself and her toys for a few minutes, and then sleep peacefully for an hour or more.

Matt and I are a little tired this morning from the nighttime wakeups, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Last night, she actually woke up and whimpered a little around 11:45 - it woke me up, and I was ready to go start the routine, reassure her we were still here but that she needed to go back to sleep - but she didn't make any more noise. When she woke up and stayed awake, around 3:30, there was a "diaper issue" that I wouldn't have wanted to go back to sleep with, either.

It's going to happen. For less pain than I'd expected, even.

Now. If I could just get her to be interested in food with actual texture.

(I know. I'm so difficult to please.)

--Liz