What a difference a good night's sleep will make. We decided this weekend, now that Mitch is six months old and he no longer has ear infections (knock on wood!) or reflux issues (more wood-knocking!), it was time to start sleeping through the night. God knows the kid is big enough to not need to eat every 4 hours -- he tipped the scales at 21 lbs., 4 oz at his six-month checkup.

We started Saturday, and we told ourselves we'd let him cry for an hour before intervening. Starting at midnight, he hollered for an hour, then I went in and tried to get him to chill, then he cried a bit more. I think he finally crashed around 2 a.m.

Then Drew got out of bed and climbed into bed with us... I think I got him back to bed at 2:30 a.m. What a way to spend Saturday night!

Last night, we went down to the wire -- Mitch woke up and started crying around 2, and went for 55 minutes of crying, gradually increasing the volume. I gave him five more minutes before I went in. And then, amazingly, right at the one-hour point, he let up and zonked out. Amazing.

And he woke up around 7:15 a.m. with a big smile on his face.

Everyone got great sleep last night, and I even managed to get up at the old crack-of-dawn time to write. I'm at that wonderful point in the writing process where I can't wait to get back to it. And I polished off chapter two and dove right into chapter three.

Now that I've had 1) time to really think about the book and 2) proper motivation to fix it up right (i.e., nifty new agent would really like to read it!), the book is chugging along wonderfully, and I keep coming up with new cool stuff to add.

I really hope I didn't just jinx myself...

Oh, and finally, Elizabeth and I watched Into the Wild this past weekend, and it really affected us both. For her, she was really hit by the disappearance of the young man, and how he never contacted his parents again. For me, I was just sort of baffled by his thought processes and how he ended up in an abandoned bus next to a raging river in Alaska. He seemed like the kind of person you run into who has such a magnetic, electrifying personality on the outside, but you know on the inside there's a tornado of turmoil going on. I did think they sort of over-simplified some of his issues with his parents and made that into the driving motivation for his travels. Overall, though, I really liked how the movie was pieced together, out of chronological order, and how each person he met on the road taught him something, and especially vice versa.

Yet another good movie that is still sticking with me. Amazing what you can remember when you get a good night's sleep! Later.