Lullabye

Some background is necessary to truly appreciate this.

Over the past two weeks April and I have been waging a pretty relentless campaign to get Nora to sleep in her own bed through the whole night. Our strategy is a combination of restricted physical access (putting a gate up in her doorway) coupled with positive reinforcement (she gets an m&m...that's right, one m&m when she stays in her own bed for the night).

It has been working like a charm, and for the past two weeks Nora has been doing a great job of sleeping through the night and staying in her own bed. That tiny m&m is an incredible motivating factor for her. It's the last thing she talks about before falling asleep at night, and the first thing she asks for in the morning: "Daaaaaadyyyyy, I slept in my own bed, time for a chocolate treeeeeeeat!"

This morning, we were driving back home from running some errands. Nora was in the back seat, singing one of the songs from her "Lullabye" CD to herself. She kept repeating the same verse over and over again:

"yay you dowwwwwn, take a reeest, may your swumber be bwessed....."

About 2 miles from home, she decided to improvise a new verse to the song:

"yay you dowwwwwn, go to sleeep, if you stay in your bed you get a chocolate treeeeeeat"

April and I laughed so hard we had tears in our eyes.