Our Little Rip Van Winkle

This is one of Owen's new summer outfits. We had to go on a little shopping outing to the outlet mall last week to buy this lil guy clothes that actually fit him. Anything from Carter's has to be size 6 months or it's too short for him, and his 3-6 month pajamas are getting too snug in the legs and feet. He's like a baby Sasquatch. His feet (and cheeks) are huge.

This is what happens when the world's most adorable breast-fed 3 month old sleeps through the night for the first time...

His new mama puts him to bed around 7:30 because he hates to stay up any later. Mr. Handsome likes his beauty rest. The new mama gets Mr. Handsome up for a 9pm dream feeding. (Dream feeding is feeding a baby while he's still asleep. Owen doesn't open his eyes, even when I burp him and change his diaper after a dream feeding.) The new mama puts the baby back in his crib and turns on the baby monitor and the fan, which helps to prevent SIDS.

The new mama eventually goes to bed herself but wakes up at 1:30 and doesn't hear anything through the baby monitor except the "whir" of the fan. "Not too unusual," thinks the new mama. "Sometimes my baby doesn't wake up until his 3am feeding," and the Sand Man takes her back to dream land. At 3:00 the new mama again awakes to nothing but the "whir" of the fan. "Hmm," she thinks, "should I go check on my little man?" Before she could answer herself, she hears a little grunt or two. "Oh, he's hungry," she thinks. The baby monitor grows silent, except for the fan, of course. The baby falls back to sleep and so does the new mama.

At 3:30 the new mama wakes again and asks her manly husband what to do. "Should I wake him up and feed him?" she asks. She doesn't get a very friendly response from her sleepy husband, so she stays glued to the monitor, listening for movement.

The next thing the new mama knows, it is 4:30. "Did you feed him?" asks the sleepy, manly husband.

"No, do you think I should wake him up and feed him? I don't know what to do. Do you think he's hungry? If he's hungry, he'll wake up, right? I just don't want him to starve or to wake up screaming because he's so hungry. Do you think he's hungry? Maybe I'll just do an experiment and see what happens."

You can imagine the husbands response at 4:30.

Then comes 5:00 and still, Little Rip Van Winkle sleeps. Ah, but at 5:30, things change. There is movement and the new mama hears grunting and wiggling through the baby monitor. "At last, my baby wakes and I can empty my aching breasts!" She dashes from the bedroom and gracefully bounds into Rip's room. She expertly places the pacifier in his mouth and goes to the bathroom to wash her hands. The baby books say that a mother should always wash her hands before feeding her baby, and this mother ALWAYS does what the books say to do.

WHAT? By the time the new mama finishes disinfecting her hands, Rip has fallen back to sleep! "Now what?" asks the new mama. She decides the crawl back into her bed and let the experiment play out.

Thankfully, this story has a happy ending. Rip finally wakes up at 6:30, like he does on most mornings, and he smiles and dances for his daddy while he gets his diaper changed. Then life goes on as it normally does in the Rip Van Winkle household.

The End.