It has begun....

41 minutes ago Ben and I began our sleep training adventure (nightmare?).  Earlier in the day we moved Asher's crib from our bedroom into his nursery, and spent a lot of time in his room throughout the day to bring home the point that it's a happy, safe place to be.

At 7:13 we put Asher into his crib, awake, for the first time in his little 5 month life. At 7:15 he started to cry. At 7:18 Ben said "I want to quit.  I hate hearing him cry."  We let him cry for three minutes, then checked on him, rubbed his back, kissed his head, and told him goodnight.  Then we waited 5 minutes before checking again, then ten minutes.  After the first three checks Ben looked at me and said "I would buckle if I were doing this alone.  We need to do this together."  Which was incredibly heartwarming, he is such a great dad.
.......

It looks like we are done with the first 'bedtime' of sleep training.  Asher cried for 47 minutes before settling himself down and falling asleep.  But we know this isn't it for the night.  We have been getting up 5-10 times a night to pop his pacifier back in when he wakes up, and tonight we will be letting him get himself back to sleep.  Of course this morning we were certain that the pacifier waking ups had to come to an end, and now it doesn't sound so bad to wake up every hour to sleepily shuffle to his crib.  It's amazing how listening to your baby cry immediately makes you rethink whether you reaaalllly need a good nights sleep ever again in your life.

That being said, we did make a unilateral [softy] parent decision to wait to sleep train Asher on naps.  Before tonight we thought knocking it all at once would be best, but he has been napping in his crib for all three naps  and while they aren't perfect, they get better every day.

Some pictures of our beautiful boy.... asleep & awake :)