Last night we had another battle with getting CootieBoy to bed. I gave him a bath at 8 p.m. and then put him in his pjs. We hung out in his room for a while, reading stories, just being together. At about 8:45 p.m. I had him get in bed, and he immediately protested. Denis was down the hall giving CootieGirl her bath, and CootieBoy wanted DADDY! DADDY! DADDY! DADDY! But I told him Daddy was busy and that he needed to lay down.
Well, I won’t go into details about the drama of me leaving his room, the screaming and crying, the attempting to climb the gate, the screaming and crying. Oh wait, I mentioned that already. I decided to let him cry it out and went down to watch a bit of TV with Denis. The crying continued – I could envision him just standing at the doorway waiting for me to reappear – for a long while and then suddenly STOPPED. Both Denis and I tried to figure out if it stopped because he got back in bed, or if it stopped because he fell asleep by the gate. At about 10:30 p.m. I went upstairs to get the answer and found him IN OUR BED. He had crawled over the gate and just hopped into our bed! He was sleeping so perfectly still that it just cracked me up. Needless to say I picked him up and put him in his bed.
He did wake up in the middle of the night and began crying, but after trying to get him back in bed for a few minutes, we opted to let him cry it out again. But listening to the hiccuped cries of “Da-haddy. Da-haddy. Mo-hommy. Mo-hommy.” got really old. Really fast. At some point my nerves were so frayed I said to Denis, “I wish he’d just shut up.” That’s major – I never say shut up.
I don’t know who passed out first – me or CootieBoy. But this morning he was still in his bed, and I was still in mine. So there’s that victory.
I’m now convinced that CootieBoy doesn’t like his toddler bed. He likes big people beds. Tonight we’re going to try the experiment of having him sleep in the guest room bed, which is a queen sized bed. If he sleeps fine in that bed then guess what we’re replacing in our near future?
I think the Supper Nanny would be proud of you!
Our sons are the same age and we are going through the same thing with bedtime.
Have you read, “Health Sleep Habits, Happy Child”?
I think the author is Weisbluth (sp?). Anyway, it has a lot of good sleep tips.
Moving his bedtime earlier helped a lot. He wasn’t getting enough sleep so being
overtired at night just made the drama worse. It’s still a struggle, but not
every single night. Good luck!
Wendy – he’s definitely getting the prescribed 12-14 hours of sleep per 24 hour period. He gets a 2-hour nap at daycare everyday, and we put him to bed at 8:30 p.m. and he sleeps until 7:30 a.m. So that’s 13 hours.