Learning Days vs. Growing Days

So Jenn came home yesterday and explained to me a concept with infants she had heard about from a teacher at school…Learning Days vs. Growing Days.  It is a simple concept really that seems to make a lot of sense.  On Learning Days the child will be up and alert all day long and on Growing Days they will sleep most of the day.  

There is really no way to predict what each day will bring except you can pretty much guarantee that the days you are off will be growing days and the days you are busy those tend to be the learning days. 

After last night, I have decided to further expand this concept and add a new type of day to the mix…I like to call these the Hulk Days.  These are the days that your child is both learning and growing all during the same day, at the same time and is mad as hell to be experiencing this phenomenon. 

That’s right, after I bragged about our reunion with sleep yesterday, Nolin had a Hulk Day.  He slept most of the day, and was even ready to go to bed earlier than his previous 9:30 bed time.  Life was good.  Jenn even made the observation that things were easier now that he was not waking up every 3 hours to eat, and we laughed about how we had become so good at functioning during those times. First rule for sleeping babies…you do not talk about sleeping babies. 

And then the clock struck 12:30 am. That is when the learning took over.  It was an epic struggle and not a lesson I hope to repeat anytime soon. 

Jenn & I would take turns trying to get Nolin back to sleep.  I would pick him up out of the crib and hold him and he would stop crying for a bit as he started taking in all of his surroundings (aka learning).  As soon as I started to place him back in the crib, he got this angry look on his face. It was as if Nolin was having a Linda Blair moment and the scene played out something like this. 

I’m not sure exactly what time he finally went to sleep.  All I know is that my alarm seemed to go off a few minutes later.  Just like the Hulk, Nolin has no recollection of last night’s events and woke up this morning a happy, eager 11 week old ready to take on the world.  While his dad…well he is just ready to take on sleep.