Sorry for the long absence from blogging. We had quite a busy summer…I’m sure you’re all wondering what happened with the little man these past few months. Please bear with me while I try to update this blog with all the milestones and memories that we created over the summer. Things might be a bit out of order for the next few posts, as I remember random bits and pieces from the summer… hopefully you wont’ mind that too much.I’ll start with the biggest milestone first- the Bubby Boo is now sleeping in a big-boy bed! It happened quickly too… one night he has having a rough time going to sleep (meaning not settling down and crying every time I left the room). Finally I left his room out of frustration, which, of course, caused a huge tantrum. Alan and I were listening to his crying from the baby monitor downstairs. I was just about to go back up when the screaming suddenly stopped. We heard some rustling and then a door opened and closed upstairs. We exchanged knowing glances. “He’s out.” Alan said. I waited a moment, expecting to see him coming down the stairs, but nothing… Perhaps it wasn’t the door we heard… maybe just him bumping around in his crib? I went upstairs to investigate and found Reshen standing in the hallway wearing a total guilty expression. I couldn’t help but laugh. It was just so odd to see him out there. “Did you climb out of your crib?” I asked. “Yeah,” he answered, still looking guilty. “Remember what mommy said?” I asked him. “If you climb out of your crib, then you need to use a big boy bed. You can’t sleep in your crib anymore.” It was a rule we had established a month or so before when he began acting like he might climb out. Now I had to follow through. I halfway expected him to start crying, but he actually smiled and said “Yeah. I want to sleep in a big boy bed.”
So for the night we took his crib mattress out of his bed and put it on the floor, surrounded by blankets. I lied down with him and he was out in less than 10 minutes. That night I searched for toddler beds on Craigslist and found one that was selling for only $15. We bought it the very next day. It’s very simple.. just a white, metal bed.. but it works well with the new white nightstand and bookshelves we snagged from Freecycle recently, and it’s the perfect size for him. He was excited at first, but seemed a little nervous to actually fall asleep in it. So for the first couple of weeks I ended up sitting in his room for moral support, I guess, while he fell asleep. At first, this seemed to work fine, and he would fall asleep without a fuss and within 30 minutes, but after awhile the novelty wore off and our new bedtime battles began. I would sometimes be in there all evening making him get back in bed and telling him to settle down and close his eyes. Eventually I decided it was time that he begin to fall asleep by himself again (after all, I knew he could do it as he had been doing just this in his crib before the climbing-out episode). Nice idea, but it didn’t go over well.
I knew it would be difficult to keep him in his bed, but figured if he at least stayed in his room, he would eventually fall asleep. Boy was I wrong. The first few nights he would not even stay in his room. He would creep downstairs repeatedly, with us taking him right back into his room each time. This would go one for a couple hours and then when it was our bedtime, he would keep coming into our room. Eventually (around midnight) I would finally convince him to lie in his bed where he would pass out from exhaustion.
After a handful of nights of this, he actually began staying in his room, BUT he would play until around midnight and then he would be so overtired that he would begin crying inconsolably until I came and helped him into bed. And oh the things he would do in those hours of unsupervised play. Clothes out of drawers, toys everywhere, lights on and off. Alan found him one time completely naked from the waist down but he had three layers on the top (one shirt on correctly, another shirt on halfway, and then a pair of shorts with an arm through one of the legs). We even tried moving his bed into our room one night (after many hours of him not going to sleep), but he just wanted to be in our bed. It felt like we tried everything- night light (but he would keep turning his overhead light on and playing instead), taking away toys (he would just calmly ask if they were going on the “night-night shelf”- didn’t phase him a bit), thought about using a gate on his doorway or rigging his doorknob so that he couldn’t open the door, but decided it would be a fire hazard, and I even tried giving him three cards and every time he got out of bed he had to give me one of them. I told him when he didn’t have any cards left he wouldn’t be able to get out of bed anymore. That only resulted in a tantrum when the last card ran out.. and he still got out of bed. I was really at my wit’s end. You simply can’t make a kid sleep. And short of putting a cage over his bed, I couldn’t make him stay in it either.
But then I had an idea. Perhaps I was going about it all wrong. I was so worried about forcing him to sleep and punishing him for not doing so. What if I instead rewarded him for doing it (or at least trying to do it) instead? I decided to give him a goal to work towards, instead of setting up rules for him to break. First of all, I needed to make staying in his bed a fun and attractive prospect, not something I simply wanted him to do. So we picked up a $20 bed tent from Ikea. It’s great- it has three sides and a top, but is open on one side so that he can still easily get in and out and it’s not too dark (which he was worried about). It just makes a nice, cozy canopy. He’s very happy with it. But we made a rule. If he gets out of his bed at nighttime, then his tent goes back to the store (because the tent is only for big boys who stay in their beds, of course). I thought for sure he would test me and make me keep my word… but the second he acted like he was getting out of bed, all I had to do was remind him of the warning and he hopped back in it as quick as could be. So we conquered problem one. At least he was in his room and in his bed.
Next came solving problem two.. him wanting me in the room. Cry-it-out simply does not work with Reshen. This kid can cry for hours and hours and the longer he goes the more hysterical he gets. It’s simply too stressful and counterproductive. So I had think of another option. I decided that I would propose checking on him often until he fell asleep. So I gave him a pile of books and said I would check on him and explained that I could hear him when he talked and that if he needed me, he could just call me, and that I would come back and give him a hug and a kiss and pat his back a lot of times before he went to sleep. I told him that Mommy had to get ready for bed to, so I couldn’t stay in there a long time. Surprisingly he accepted this. Maybe it was the novelty of the tent? The first night, I only waited 2 minutes before I checked on him, so that he knew I really was going to. Then I waited 5 minutes, then 7, and so on. I was shocked when he eventually fell asleep that all by himself without any crying or getting out of bed! Each night I would stretch out the time between “check-ins” Now I go in there after 10 minutes or so, and the next time 20 minutes, etc. Sometimes he calls me in sooner and I always go… I don’t want to loose the trust and most of the time it’s because he needs water or a diaper change or something.
So the bed tent and check-ins were keeping him in bed and helping him fall asleep for the time being, but I worried that he would soon get bored and revert back to his old ways, so I needed a long-term goal for him to work towards. I made a chart and told him that every morning he could put a sticker on it if he had fallen asleep by himself and stayed asleep all night. When every box had a sticker in it, he would earn a special trip somewhere. He picked the aquarium. It totally worked. Whenever he would start crying or complaining about going to sleep by himself I would just remind him of the aquarium trip and he would agree that he needed to sleep by himself. He was so proud the morning that he put the last sticker on and was so excited the day that we went. He even told the ticket lady “I sleep all by myself!”
I know our system isn’t perfect, and I also know that Reshen might decide one day soon that he’s had enough and put up a fuss, but for now I’m happy and he’s happy. We have our bedtime routine, he hops into bed with lots of books and then we have a few more hugs/kisses with the check-ins… and he falls asleep without the crying and frustration that we were having. It’s been going smoothly for a few weeks now. And he’s also sleeping through the night most nights, so we’re both also more rested. Yay!
