Getting Olivia on a sleep schedule has not been easy.
As I've learned from work,
The best way to get someone to do something for you is by making him feeling like he wants to do it for himself.
You can't talk to a baby,
But that doesn't mean you can't communicate with her.
We might not be able to ask her to do something,
But we can certainly encourage that desirable behavior through adjusting her environment.
This is how we're trying to get Olivia on a schedule.
To get her to stay up during the day,
We try to keep her stimulated.
We try to talk to her a lot,
Give her a bunch of kisses,
Leave the TV on for noise,
Play with her tiny hands,
Change her diaper,
Open the shades to let sunlight in,
And show her flashcards (I'll talk about these another time, because they're really cool).
Of course these are just a few that I can think of right now.
Meanwhile, we need to set the mood at night.
We try to feed her more,
And sometimes we'll even let her cry for a couple minutes to burn off energy.
We also give her a bath.
She really loves her baths.
We turn the lights off,
And we try to be quiet.
Sometimes we'll put her in her swing.
Usually, we turn on the vibration on her bed and play soft music.
Erin says she feels like Olivia slept longer than usual last night,
So I think it's working.
We just started, so it's hard to say,
But as we continue with the routine,
We should know more about the effectiveness.
The most important thing right now is patience.
A winner is someone who never gave up.
She's learning at her own pace,
And the last thing we want is for her to get stressed out.
She'll be ready when she's ready.
