Smiles, Tears, and other life events

I am definitely seeing more smiles out of Gabriel during the day. He is also making eye contact more with me the past few days. He still pushes me away, and doesn't like to look in my eyes when we are close together, but we are making progress. I like to term it I'm now at babysitter status. In the beginning we were having a fun overnight. Then we got the I hate you stage. Then we got the I'm here stage.

As far as the tears go, we decided on Sunday that we would try to teach Gabriel how to put himself back to sleep on his own starting this weekend. It was not an easy decision, as we have been advised in books and by others not to let him cry. Well, after seeing him scream through several medical procedures (and that's ok), and him getting worse at sleeping at night (waking up every hour to hour and a half until about 1-2 a.m.), we decided we really didn't have a choice. We had done everything we could to help him otherwise. Unfortunately, by Monday night, he forced our hand to do it sooner. Steve put him to bed in the middle of the night completely asleep 4 times, and he woke back up crying each time he was placed in the bed. We are trying to do it in the most comforting way possible, to somehow make it a little better. We are staying in the room with him, doing the "sh" thing, and touching him. Here's to hoping this works. At least he slept from 10:30 last night to 4:00 this morning, and not back up until 7:30. I also got 2 almost 1-1/2 hour naps out of him today, which is completely unheard of. Unfortunately tonight, he only took 1 ounce of milk, and couldn't stay awake past 7:30. Bad start.

It must have been over a month ago, Lauren and I were heading out the garage door, when I didn't realize she had her hand on the door post, and I gently closed the door. However, we had the windows open in the house at the time, and my gentle close turned into a hard slam. She cried, but since we had thick, new door seals recently added, I didn't think anything of it. Until a week ago when I noticed her ring finger nail looked funny. Confirmed at her check up that her nail had died. She has spent the past couple days thoroughly enjoying grossing out her parents with her dangling nail. She especially loves to do this at the dinner table. It finally came off today, thank you Lord!