Okay, so yesterday’s invective was full of advice for parents around the globe. I felt very passionate about the subject and always will. However, despite writing about using your gut and trusting your instincts, I wholly ignored myself. I confess to you, reader, on just the third day of STW 2.0, that I have modified the rules a bit.

I don’t think that it will be possible to condition Annie to sleep through the night so long as she is standing up in her crib when she wakes. I am banking on the want to stand being a phase that she has to get through. Because of this, last night my plan was to continually peek in on her while she is crying (due to the layout of our apartment and the two entrances to her room this is possible, see Exhibit A below) and as long as she was not standing I would let her work through it. Work through it, by the way, is Joe speak for Cry It Out, a buzz phrase that I'll avoid because it makes a lot of people very emotional in the baby rearing world.

The new plan worked for less than ten minutes. The first peek showed Annie sitting forlornly in the corner of her crib. The second peek, a few short minutes later, showed her standing and screaming and wondering where the hell I was. Sorry fans, but at that point I fed the beast, thus sealing my fate. In the dark of her room I had some feelings of guilt at the realization that I was essentially conditioning her to do the opposite of what I wanted. It’s a nasty little Catch-22 we are caught in, but until I’m comfortable (or desperate enough to give up) with her ability to fall back asleep on her own, I will continue on this weary path. When you are still reading this blog 18 years from now and Annie is pulling an all nighter during her freshman year in college, I will post a picture of me warming her bottle in her micro-fridge.

Exhibit A: