Things That Go Bump In The Night

Lately we've been having a lot of bumps in the night.  As I mentioned not long ago, our son has figured out how to get out of the crib by himself.  And he helps himself to this lovely exercise every night at bedtime.  We are now going into our 3rd week of this, and it's finally getting better.  And no, we haven't gotten a big boy bed yet.  And yes, we probably should.  But he's our third child, and so far he hasn't injured himself, so we are feeling pretty good about it all.

The tell-tale sign of how much his bedtime routine is getting better is how many loud thumps you hear in a single sitting.  It used to be 6 or 7 or more.  And it would go on for an hour.  A lot of those sessions were peppered with "Daaaaddy" and pleas for more time with his idol.  And the more daddy got involved in the process, the longer it all seemed to go on.  

So I put an end to that pretty fast.  Call me a spoil-sport, but it was getting a little ridiculous.  My husband would get so annoyed by it all that he'd resort to some crazy tactics.  Although one of them turned out to not be so crazy.  

It seems that taking his favorite snuggly animal away got our son to listen up a little.  Yes, it seems a little cruel.  But it worked for my husband, and I've gotten it to work for me too. 

Now this week my husband has been out of town and I have things running like a tired rusty squeaky well-oiled machine.

I put him in his bed, tell him to stay there, and I leave.  I wait outside and if I hear him stand up I look in and say "lie down".  If he doesn't lie down, I come in and take away his doggy, and go back outside.  After he's been able to lie down in his crib for a few minutes without standing up, I go in and give it back.  And we do it all over again if he stands up again, or if he gets out before I can catch him.  Tonight, after only 2 escapes, he settled down and went to sleep.  Not bad considering I wasn't patrolling his room very well.  The other night it was only once.  A record!

Nap time has gotten better too.  It's never been as bad as bedtime, but today he just went right down and never even bothered to take a second look at the door.  Sweet.

Now the only other hitch in this is that at times he's been getting up during the night.  And he doesn't hesitate to just thump his way out of bed.  It's rather startling to be woken up by the sound of your child basically jumping out of his crib.  

And you add to that the weird energy that we've had in the house around midnight, and you get some more bumps in the night.  For the last several nights, the kids have all taken turns getting up around 12:15am.  The first night it was my younger daughter, complaining that it was too dark or some other asinine thing like that.  Too dark?  It's the middle of the goddamned night.  Of course it's too dark!  And of course she had to tell me this on 3 separate occasions over the next half hour.  Then, at 2:30a that night, there was a bump in the night.  Jailbird was stretching his wings and it took 2 times to get him back in bed for good.

The next night my son was randomly out of his crib close to midnight.  With barely a peep he escaped, but I only had to put him back one time.

Then last night I figure maybe, just maybe, it will be a quiet night.  Sure enough, my younger daughter and my son were quiet all night.  But, go figure, my oldest got up to go to the bathroom at 12:15am.  Now normally I might not have stirred too much when she gets up, which is very rarely.  But these days we have so many bumps in the night that require my more or less immediate attention.  So I sprang out of bed at the first sounds, only to see my son's door still closed and to hear the little tinkle from the bathroom.

Great.  I'm up even when I don't have to be!  So be it.

Now here's the kicker for all of this sleeping madness.  Around the same time that my son started escaping from the crib, he also started getting up around 5:45a or 6am.  Oy!  Who the hell wants to be up at 5:45am other than the girl that delivers our newspaper?  And for a non-morning person, that's like getting up in the middle of the night.

For the past few weeks my husband has been taking the morning shift, as usual.  We have tried putting my son back in his crib, but it's usually useless.  You end up just getting way too much exercise for that time of morning.  What's also usually useless is me going back to sleep.  But at least I get a few quiet minutes in a warm bed before I have to face the world.

This morning stuff was the thing I was dreading when I knew my husband was going out of town.  Sure enough, after that night when my daughter had me up at midnight (right after I'd gone to bed, by the way), and then my son had me up at 2:30am, there he was, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 5:45am.

Enough is enough.

I tried putting him back in, over and over, until about 6:15am, and then I gave up.  

The next morning I tried to have a more positive attitude, and while I was putting him back in at almost 6am, I did the take-away-his-favorite-stuffed-animal-the-only-piece-of-security-he-has-in-the-crib-we-are-cruel-parents trick.  And it worked for a bit.  Then I told him, after I gave it back, stay here and wait for mommy to come back.  And just like sleep-training in reverse, I came back after a few minutes and said "good job", and then again after 5 minutes, and then again after 10 minutes.  And then I called it a morning and got up with him at 6:30am.

Are you tired yet?

Well here's the good news.  Last night I put him to bed and after not too much fuss, he was out at 8:15pm.  Which I have decided needs to be his new bedtime, since he's clearly getting enough sleep that he can wake up before the roosters.  And had I closed his curtains real tight to keep out the morning light.  And I had turned his humidifier down to a lower setting so it wasn't quite so loud (good for drowning out our night time noise with the girls when he's trying to go to sleep, but I've noticed it seems awfully loud during our middle of the night tea parties).  And I hoped that our morning lesson had struck a bit of a chord.

And this morning he slept until 6:45am.  Whaaaaat?!  

Not only that, he didn't make a thump when he got out of bed.  He managed to get out quietly, then walk over to our door.  At that point he usually starts saying "daaaaaadddy" much too loud for everyone else in the house.  But this morning he didn't do that.  He just stood quietly right by our door until I came over to get him.

And that's when I'm pretty sure I heard angels singing.

Now the question is, what worked?  Was it the morning before?  Was it the curtains?  The humidifier?  I have no idea, but I'm repeating it all again and we'll see what happens.

The saddest part of this whole thing is that I am absolutely ecstatic that I got to sleep in until 6:45am this morning.