Somnolent

In my lunch box of lovely sounding words, the kind that you can sniff, roll around in your mouth, and pour smoothly into your very being, somnolent is among my favorite. It is such a lazy, dozy, round, liquid word.

I shouldn't write this post yet; it is tempting the fates. Today is Friday, April 25th. Last Friday was the last night that a 33" tall person walked into my room in the middle of the night. It's been over a week since either of us had to get up with him or listen to him cry himself back to sleep or put him back in bed after he fell out. The actual BED-TIME is still a little rocky, but the gate is effective. Duncan still gets out of bed and stands at the gate to express his disapproval; however, it's more of a political move at this point. It's not a "how can you do this to me you're so mean" cry; it's a "why can I not get my way" cry. It also seems to have a half life. We started with the hour of crying, which decreased to 30 minutes in the same day, which decreased to 15 the following day. One night it only took 5 minutes, but that was the night I was FOOL (very ugly word) enough to take this photograph, which brought Duncan back to the gate for ANOTHER 15 minutes. Fool.

I am tempting the fates because we're at Nana and Poppy's house. We're trying Duncan's travel tent for the first time. He has played in it, but we haven't tried sleeping in it for about a year. He is actually asleep in it at this moment; we'll see if he stays there. We're also sleeping in the same room with him, which we have not attempted for a while. I'm crossing my fingers.

I am genuinely hoping that my next post will be about something other than sleep because, frankly, I grow weary of myself. We may have successfully survived our latest month of sleep perdition (I'm not sure if I can publish the h e double hockey sticks word). Night night, sleep tight. Don't let the love bugs bite. Sweet dreams!

Barbarians at the Gate

It is official; Jamie and I are the Meanest Parents in the Whole Wide World. I remember bestowing that title on my own parents, thinking at the time that they had it wrapped up for eternity. If you've been following this post (and since there are about 8 of you, I think, checking in at various times), you will be aware that our experiences with the Big Boy Bed began relatively well and then deteriorated precipitously. Getting up in the middle of the night and walking Duncan back to his bed has not been a huge deal. There are even many nights now that he stays in bed. No, the new development is his gleeful refusal to stay in bed for naps and bedtime. It took about a month for him to realize that HE DOESN'T HAVE TO GO TO BED. It used to happen every couple of nights, but last week we experienced several, consecutive, torturous nights of chasing him back to his room repeatedly from 7:30 until 8:30 and even sitting with him in the dark, physically preventing him from leaving the bed. Our one hour of free time shrank to almost nothing. Through the miasma that has become our evening hours, we were forced to conceive of a plot so nefarious that it puts even Ferber to shame. We gated his room. Sunday afternoon, he stood at the door and shook the gate, screaming, crying, and imploring all the while, for almost an hour before he fell limply asleep in the doorway. It was miserable. Sunday night, he shook the bars for about half an hour before I escorted him back to his bed, where he quickly fell asleep. I'm too cautious to perceive this as progress just yet. We'll see what this evening brings. On the other hand, we have all had three solid nights of sleep where NO ONE wandered around in the night. So, we are the Meanest Parents in the Whole Wide World, but we are more well rested than we had been, which makes us a lot more pleasant to be around.

(For those activists among you who are worried about the safety issues, we remove the gate as soon as he's asleep in case the monsters try to chase him. The only place he can get to in the middle of the night is our room.)