What does Maggie May have to do with Oakley’s sleep training?

Well, today marks a week since I started sleep training Oakley. I decided to sleep train her to help prepare her for the babysitters once school starts in a couple of weeks.  She’s actually doing pretty well, but if there’s one thing I’m doing differently than what every book, Google article, or friend that is a sleep training expert says is following my mom intuition. The best parenting advice I’ve ever gotten is, “There’s no right or wrong.  There’s no handbook, it’s whatever works best for you and your family.”  So guess what I did? I broke all of the sleep training rules and I picked Oakley up out of her crib and I rocked her to sleep! And you know what? I don’t regret one second!  I went in there, kneeled next to her crib, hugged her for a while and I just felt the urge to pick her up and rock her. She laid her head down on my shoulder and fell right asleep, but instead of laying her down right away, I rocked and rocked her.  I stared at her precious lips, her perfect nose, and her little eyelashes because I never want to forget this time in my life.  The past year has gone by so fast and sometimes I feel like I don’t remember everything from the first couple of months of her life, which I know is normal.  They’re only little once and I’m going to soak up every moment with her.  Although I did end up laying her down after a while because I had to pee lol. Anyway, my dishes and laundry were still waiting for me and I didn’t care one bit that I didn’t get some housework done while she napped.  If you follow the books or articles to a T, I’m sure your child will get sleep trained a lot quicker than mine, but I prefer to follow my motherly instincts and do what feels right to me.  I forgot to mention, she went down for her second nap perfectly fine even though I took her out of her crib.

Okay okay, so what does Maggie have to do with Oakley’s sleep training?  Yesterday, I was laying Oakley down for her nap and Maggie was laying under a tree outside of her window.  Oakley looooves to see Maggie out the window!  She gets so excited and points at her.  I know one of the number one tips for sleep training is to make sure you have blackout curtains or that the room is pretty dark, but I couldn’t close the window shade on Maggie.  I left the blinds up and Oakley fell asleep within a couple of minutes.  When she woke up, guess who was still right outside her window?  Maggie!  These two have the sweetest bond!  We spend a lot of our time outside following Maggie around the farm.

p.s.- Did you notice Oakley’s cute little shoes in these pictures?