Meeting Santa

We took Camden to meet Santa Claus this past weekend. He really has no clue who Santa is. Truth be told, the whole experience was more about Mommy and Daddy getting a cute picture than anything else. Camden did great talking to Santa, but as the picture shows, he wasn't too sure about sitting on his lap. The poor kid looked terrified and on the verge of tears the whole time. We rescued him before any real tears flowed. Once he was safely in Mommy's arms, he was once again all smiles and eager to tell Santa, "Bye, Bye Santa!"

Camden gave us an early Christmas present this year. For seven straight nights now (and counting), he has gone to bed entirely on his own. Most of our blog readers are probably aware that our little guy has never been a great sleeper. We blame ourselves for not "training" him properly when he was just a little baby. He has always required being rocked to sleep and has never consistently slept through the night. He's had periods of time where he'll do great for several weeks/months, and then he would regress. When he turned two, he went through quite a regression and woke up almost every night for about a month. Well, last Wednesday night after I finished reading his bedtime stories, he climbed off of my lap and pointed to his bed. I asked him if he wanted to get in it and he said yes. Once in bed, I tucked him in, said goodnight, and left the room. We never heard a peep out of him until the next morning. We made a huge deal out of it the next day hoping it would encourage him to do it again. Tonight was the seventh night in a row that he's happily gotten in bed and fallen asleep on his own. What an answer to prayer this has been! (You can probably tell by my rambling on about it what a huge blessing this is to us.) Not that I minded rocking my angel to sleep every night, but it is nice to have that extra 30-60 minutes of Mommy (and Daddy) time.