Again this morning Aidan woke at 5 AM and couldn't get back to sleep. His incessant whining and requests for "gook" made us nuts but didn't change the answer to his plea. I guess this is what weaning looks like.
In my sleepy haze I asked Jason what his take on the situation is. He reminded me of the lessons learned way back in Psychology 100 concerning learning theory. Whenever you extinguish a behavior (in this case, night nursing and night waking), an animal (in this case, Aidan) will spontaneously revert back to the extinguished behavior from time to time as if it (he) has forgotten that the behavior has been relearned. Although I completely understand learning theory and couldn't argue, this explanation didn't help my frustration.
The biggest problem was that Aidan didn't seem to know what he wanted. He wanted gook but when that wasn't available he agreed to food. In the midst of getting the food, he said he wanted to sleep. Apparently he didn't feel that he could go to sleep without the gook but it was still unavailable (the sun was still not up) and he cried and whined for a good hour. We each tried laying down next to him first in our bed and then in his. For a short time (3-4 minutes) I thought he was headed off to dreamland but then he snapped awake and cried some more. I just decided to get us all up. We played with his trains and his musical instruments. We got ready for school. He ate breakfast. Then when the sun came up he had his gook.
After his gook, he nodded off a little. You had better believe that we immediately woke him up and made him go to school. Boy, did we ever get to school early! He should sleep really well at naptime!
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