The Aha! Moment about sleep

AHA! 

There's always a moment in everyone's life (hopefully more than one... ;-/) that you go- OH MY WORD THAT IS A GREAT THOUGHT!

And let me tell you- I normally forget those thoughts.

So before I forget- here is my thought.  

Just a few minutes ago I was putting my son, Karson, to bed, and he just didn't want to go to bed.  He recently figured out how to scoot, which has, of course, opened up a whole new world to him.  I can just see it in his eyes as I watch him- he scoots into this corner, and looks around, and I can just tell he is thinking "Wow, it looks so different over here! Why did I wait so long to scoot?"  

It's kind of like if you were to sit on a couch backward - that is, to have your head hanging off the couch and your feet in the air - and you look up at the ceiling and look around at how the doors don't go all the way to the ceiling (or the floor in this case) which means that if you were able to walk on the ceiling, then you would have to step up to get into the next room.  If you followed that, or if you remember doing that as a child, you are probably thinking, "Yeah, that was totally weird! Kind of cool to think of life walking on the ceiling!"  

Or ... maybe it's just one of my quirks.  But I always thought it would have been pretty awesome to have an upside down day, just for kicks.  Hopefully I'm not alone....

Anywho!  That was not my thought.  So, Karson is being totally hard to put down, and I'm kinda feeling generous, so I am holding him and trying different positions to make him sleepier so it isn't so hard to put him down.  I bounce him (which worked when he was younger, but now only makes him go "aaAAaaaaAAaaa" so that when he bounces he sounds funny :-) ), and I try to give him a bottle, I hold him in the burp position, in the rocking position, and then I start swaying side to side with him in the rocking position (head on top of one arm, feet hanging off the other arm, at least in older kids' case).  

AHA!  This makes me think of one night when I was getting tired while I was laying in bed and suddenly my mind had me swaying so that I was rocking back and forth like a swing.  It was marvelous and one of the best feelings I've ever imagined, and of course I fell asleep like a rock, probably purring.

So I watched as my son starts to do the same thing- he makes this sound that kinda sounds like  the groan you have when you are really loving the massage you are receiving, and then his eyes start drifting shut.  Every once in awhile that little stinker tries to open his eyes, but that swaying just kept him going back down into slumberland.  Soon, I had him down in the crib with nary a sound.

So there- my AHA! moment is- if you need help getting your child to sleep- try swaying him back and forth from foot to head, and if your child is anything like me and my child, you will have a sleeping child within no time.