I hope I’m not jinxing it, but the past two nights? CootieBoy has slept all night and not crawled into bed with us until 7 a.m. (which is what time we get up during the week anyway).
He’s done this without the benefit of those Calms Forte pills because a couple days after we started giving him those pills he got a MAJOR (and I mean major) diaper rash. We stopped the pills in case that was the cause of the rash (which took almost a full week to disappear). Now that the rash is gone I may give him pills again to see if the rash comes back. If it does, no more pills. But every night as he goes to bed he asks for his “candy”.
But he and I have a nice quick routine now. We’ll get under the covers on his bed and read a long story (although last night he wanted to read Peanuts cartoons, but the only problem was they were all in French (don’t ask), so he basically just listened to me fake-read French for about ten minutes while pointing at the pictures), then I turn out the lights and he and I lay in the bed for a couple minutes (usually during this time he’ll either cuddle with me or push me out of the bed – depends on his mood). He then pronounces that he wants Daddy, I get up and say, “Okay, I’ll go see if I can find him,” I leave the room, close the door, and that’s it.
No crying for Daddy. No fussing about going to bed. No crying because I’m leaving. It’s a nice routine and a calming one at that (for both of us, since I get 5-10 minutes of laying in a comfy bed in the dark too). And to have a full night’s sleep the past two nights without the benefit of CootieBoy running in and slamming the door behind him has been nice.
Of course, it probably helped last night that he didn’t get to bed until almost 9:30 p.m. since Denis kept the kids up so they could see me when I got home from Book Club.
He got into bed with us at some hour last night, but I think it was after 5 a.m., maybe even 6 a.m. I didn’t check.