Sleep?

I used to always say, "We sleep when we die." But the older I get the more sleep I seem to require. I haven't slept really well in over a year. I knew that having a child, my sleep would be disrupted. But I prepared myself by reading all the books on how to get your baby to sleep through the night. I read ones that my friends swore by and that helped their children to sleep through the night. I was sure that it would work for me, it sounded simple. I also thought "sleeping through the night" meant 7-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. It turns out that some childhood experts define "sleeping through the night" as 4 consecutive hours of uninterrupted sleep. I beg to differ! After 4 months of my definition of sleepless nights I was frustrated beyond all belief and so very tired. Now after Gavin's first birthday we still have sleepless nights. Too many. There is the occasional night where we are uninterrupted for 7-10 hours by our little guy. But they are few and far between. We've tried it all, but there always seems to be a cold or a tooth coming in or a bad nap that throws our overtired man out of the loop. It could be I've been doing something terribly wrong and haven't figured out what makes my child sleep well. Or it could be he's simply active and also believes what I used to, "we sleep when we die."