Again

The morning nap. I rocked him till he went to sleep, then he woke up and cried when I put him down. I left the room and for about twenty minutes he was alternately playing, quiet, or crying (but he never got hysterical), and then he fell asleep. This is genius! I left his room at 9:00, and it's now 9:45. . . . Annnnnd I spoke too soon. He's up. Sigh. Still, I consider it progress. He never falls asleep on his own, and we've never let him cry it out, because we don't feel comfortable with it (sometimes I wish I did). This new way doesn't feel like crying it out. I don't know what's changed, I guess I'm just following his cues and doing what feels right in the moment. I would never have put him down and left like this two weeks ago. I feel like our travels last week were really good for all of us. We were forced to help him go to sleep differently, and he ended up being put down a lot sooner than usual, as in not rocked endlessly. (We didn't have a workable rocker, and rocking on a couch is brutal on the back, we discovered.)