Last night was another tough night with the kids. Many hours during the nights of the last couple of weeks were spent listening to Gabriel cry as we finally got tough and started to get serious about getting the kids to sleep through the night in their cribs. I think we had two really tough nights with at least three hours of crying and screaming and going back and forth from our bedroom to theirs. The rest weren’t too bad at all – maybe one or two quick crying periods that were ended easily. One of the main issues that the twins have right now is that they both tend to stand up in the crib as soon as they wake from their sleep. This is especially true of Gabriel because he just learned to pull up to standing by himself about a month or two ago and he’s really using that to his “advantage”.

He’s starting to cry again as I type this….I’ll be back.

Continued: Okay, I’m back. So, all of this crying it out culminated in a night, two days ago, without a single disturbance. It was quite heartening and we thought we were turning the corner. Then last night, Gabriel was just completely inconsolable several times and we felt we had to pick him up in order to get him to calm down. We surmised that he was not sick or in pain by the fact that he was completely content while he was being held by one of usbut he just sounded so pitiful that we felt we needed to hold him.

I think he got used to that and he seemed to be reverting to his old habits again tonight. Once more, we resolved to cry it out. It turned out to be a pretty decent night after Gabriel decided to stop crying and go back to sleep at around midnight. Neither child made a peep until after 7am.

The most difficult thing about the whole cry it out thing is that you have to listen to your child cry and scream and wail and sometimes throw themselves all over their crib for several minutes at a time. Before I became a parent, I would have thought that this would be annoying, but not has heart wrenching as it turns out to be. You honestly feel that your kid is going to hate you in the morning as well as harbor some deep resentment and feelings of social rejection well into adulthood. Add these feelings of guilt to your already almost incoherent thought processes at midnight or 4AM and you’ve got an almost irresistable desire to just pick the crying baby up and bring them into bed with you so that you both might get some sleep.

So, onto towels: I love thick, heavy, luxurious bath towels. The ones we had growing up were almost like dish towels now that I look back on it. We didn’t know any better…. Before Robyn and I were married, we purchased some Ralph Lauren Polo towels that were a bit thicker and certainly a lot larger than any towels I had used prior to this time. They were nice. But then, on our honeymoon, we stayed at the Ballagio and were introduced to SERIOUS towels. These things were soft and thick and heavy and HUGE! I could easily wrap one of the bath towels around even my fat ass! Not too long after that, we spent some cash and got some nice bath towels. I believe they are from the [url=http://www1.macys.com/catalog/product/index.ognc?ID=194231&CategoryID=15278]Macy’s Hotel Collection[/url] or something like that. I was once again reminded how nice these towels are when I grabbed one of our old Ralph Lauren towels to use in the shower and I was taken aback at how light these were in comparison to our good ones. Okay, that’s it…I’m a towel snob!