Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Where Have You Been All My Life?

Did you miss me? I did (miss me). I'm not sure where I've been. At my wit's end, to be honest. Whatever day it was that Marcie and Mary Anne and I went out to lunch (I think it was Wednesday June 25?), Jamie and I had had a lousy night putting Duncan to sleep the night before. Tonight, he went to sleep with no fuss. With only one exception, we fought the bedtime battle each night between June 25 and July 8. His arsenal has been a mix of willful escape (running out of his room), refusal to close his eyes, crying, moaning, begging, and a host of other maneuvers I cannot recall at the moment. We tried our old gate (the standby, photographed months ago during the last sleep fiasco), and Duncan swiftly climbed over it. We spent at LEAST a week taking turns sitting in his room with him each night until he finally went to sleep...it was averaging 1 1/2 to 2 hours each night - not just 90 to 120 minutes, but the ONLY CHILD FREE 90 to 120 MINUTES WE HAVE DURING THE DAY. It was the only way we could keep him in his bed and in his room until he fell asleep. Last weekend we retrieved John and Melissa's old gates (with VERTICAL bars) from storage and installed one. Then, we could keep Duncan in his room, but the game switched to his standing at the gate crying "Mama, Daddy..." You get the picture. Then he began to use his language skills against us, and "Mama" became "I want to go downstairs too." I was tempted to reward his excellent use of language, but, frankly, NO. Last night, he gave us "the hand," which he waved in the universal sign for "NO" while declaring "No bedtime Mama Daddy."

Tonight, there was no fuss. He stayed in bed until he fell asleep, no begging, no crying, no lamentations. Today, also, he had no nap. All of you who suggested that maybe it's time to give up his nap, you may be right. I surrender. We have been having similar struggles with naps, and yesterday and today, we let him look at books quietly in his bed in lieu of napping, and he did so willingly. I'll be sad to see the end of the nap, but maybe it's time. At least today, there seems to be a connection between nap skipping and bed going. It may just be a correlation; more research is needed to determine causation.

Who knew it was possible to devote so much attention to sleep?

The more linguistic inclined among you may notice my inconsistent, erratic, and embarrassing mixture of verb tenses. Though I am not sleep deprived, this sleep nightmare has been EXHAUSTING. I do not honestly know in which verb tense I am living. I don't know what happened yesterday, and I have only a vague idea what is to come tomorrow. Much like a teacher on summer vacation who has no idea of the date, I believe a full time parent dealing with sleep issues has no conception of time. So there you have it. That's where I've been since July 2!

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