I know that I have mentioned before that Owen was a GREAT sleeper! After the initial "cry yourself to sleep" period with his naps, he always went right to sleep without much fuss.....until now.....
Unfortunately, over the past couple of months, he has been terrible about not only going to bed, but staying in his bed during the night. The nighttime bed invasions started first. It seems that when he wakes up during the night, he immediately heads towards our bedroom and attempts to crawl into bed with us. We have never allowed him to sleep with us, except for the occasional Saturday morning when we were trying to coax a few more minutes of sleep out of him, so this is definitely a new thing for him to be doing. Dutifully, at least one time a night and sometimes two, Tony or I wake up him to crawling into our bed and pick him up and carry him back to his. (although I do admit that one of us has woken up at some point and he is all snuggled in and neither of us remember him getting into bed!!) Sometimes when we are carrying him back I swear he falls back asleep for the short trip down the hall. Other times, he wants to talk to us and makes sure that we have covered him appropriately before we head back to our room. I wondered if he started waking up due to his ears bothering him (he his always itching his ears when he is trying to get comfortable). When we have asked him about it, he says that he is worried.....He has mentioned things about monsters or bugs in his room or under his bed at times. We do what every parent does at the stage and reassure him that there is nothing there.....and continue to be surprised when we wake up in the morning without a nighttime invasion.
Now to top off the nighttime invasions of our bed, he is refusing to go to stay in his bed when we lay him down. It has been so frustrating lately....I can't even tell you!! He is very sneaky now....crawling on his hands and knees down the hallway, hiding in closets or under our bed....We started with the discipline by putting him in bed and talking, which then escalated to spanking which didn't seem to be helping either. We tried taking things away when he didn't stay in bed....then I suggested that he was looking for our reaction so we needed to just calmly put him back to bed without saying anything to him. It seemed to help, but then things got worse (and daddy can only redirect so many times before he has a hard time not reacting-sorry honey! Love you!!). I have even resorted to sitting in his room while he insistently tries to get me to talk to him. That still took 45 minutes for him to calm down enough and go to sleep.....but now I think he works up to wanting me to do that, so I stopped that too. Now we are back to putting him back to bed without a reaction. I've also offered an incentive of staying in his bed for 3 nights means he gets to earn a playdoh tractor that he has been wanting......I'm not joking when I say that it is usually about an hour every night of putting him back to bed...AHHHH! We contemplated taking away his afternoon nap, but we had a day over break where he didn't get one and it wasn't pretty....Gramma has been making sure that he is down by 1 and will wake him up by 3 at the latest to try and help at night.
So....the saga continues for now.....I hope its just a phase.....this momma and daddy are frustrated and tired!
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