« My younger man | Main | Big brother »
March 16, 2007
Sleepy bye
The other night after I'd finished Ethan's bedtime routine, he still wasn't sleepy. (Actually, that's been the case EVERY night since the time change.) I left him and came back to check on him a few times, to no avail. So I went off to get Linna to sleep instead. About ten minutes later, Jeff went in to check on Ethan, and Ethan was still waiting for me to come back... but he was all excited because he'd counted past 600 already. When I finally got in there, he was almost to 1000. So he finished getting to 1000 (the highest he'd ever counted by ones), and then I said good-night one last time.
Then last night we were all exhausted (I've had a few bad nights, so I slept upstairs one night at Jeff's insistence, which meant a very bad night for Jeff and Linna), except for Ethan, who nonetheless wanted to sleep in the big bed. He was too squirmy, so Jeff suggested if he wasn't sleepy he should go back to his bed and read. About 20 minutes later, I went to check on him, and he'd turned on his little bedside lights (blue paper lanterns, very cozy). Strewn around him and on top of him were four books and a calculator. He was fast asleep. So I cleaned up, tucked him in better, turned off his light, and kissed his cheek.
Overall, it seems he's mostly made the transition to sleeping in his own bed. If he particularly wants to be with us on a given night, we usually let him, and of course if he wakes up in the night he joins us. But most nights we do the routine in his bed, he falls asleep there, and then he comes in to our bed around 7 in the morning. That really works for us. And it's nice to know that it's possible to go from total co-sleeping, nursing to sleep for years, to a kid who falls asleep on his own, in his own bed, and sleeps well there.
Posted by ktingey at March 16, 2007 02:31 PM