Dreaming

About once a week, The Boy Who Doesn't Nap falls asleep in the car on the way home from preschool. Inevitably, he falls asleep when he's five minutes away from home. To wake him risks the epic whining and crying of The Unslept. Jamie carries him inside, and I take him in my arms and collapse into the couch. He sleeps like a bear, heavy and deep. I hold him in my lap while I smell his sweet, little boy smell and stroke his sweaty hair, knowing all the while that my days are numbered. Soon, he will be too heavy to hold like this and too much boy to allow my affections.  As it is, I can barely breathe with his heat and his nearly 35 pounds molded into my chest, but we dream on, and I can almost pretend that I can keep him safe like this forever.

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.)