Tonight's Festival of Bedtime started at 7:30 with a nice warm bath. It was followed by wrestling the Little Man into clothes, and an attempt to "wind down" playing with the Poker Chips in a Coffee Can toy. Then, to the bed. At around 8. And then the game was on.
First Quarter: Mommy plays bed goalie. She plays music, says soothing things that include "nigh-night" every-other word, and makes sure all squirming body parts remain on the bed. All while enduring ear-splitting screaches, and "you've broken my heart" crying, complete with the "I-can't-catch-my-breath" sobs. Oddly enough, the only thing that actually calmed him down was his little praying frog his Grandma got him. I guess you probably do need the Lord the second night in your Big Boy Bed.
8:30, and Little Man is at least calm enough that 100% of his body parts are no longer moving 100% of the time, signaling . . .
Second Quarter: Mommy covers the Little Man up, and plays Referee at the door. Referee involves standing at the door saying "don't get out of that bed" "Get back in that bed" and "Mommy's watching you, you'd better stay in that bed". Over, and over, and over, and over. Much more crying and throwing of body down on the bed ensues.
Half Time: Daddy decides that the Little Man has been crying entirely too long, and Mommmy just isn't doing it right. Daddy tries being the bed goalie, only nicer. Half time ends when Daddy yells "we've got a runner!" and washes his hands of the whole mess.
Third Quarter: Involves Refereeing again. The Little Man put up more of an offense, involving sliding slowly off the bed so the Ref wouldn't notice and covering up and covertly peeking out to see if the Ref was still watching. Not so much crying - except when Mommy deployed her secret weapon of a tap on the bottom. Finally, after stepping out of line-of-sight for over 1 minute with no movement, Mommy declared victory.
8:43, and Mommy mistakenly forgets that there's always a
Fourth Quarter: Three successful breakouts were staged. Parental defense was laggerdly (the Little Man got all the way to the kitchen and grabbed a sippy cup with water in it on one forray). However, we finally wore him down.
9:05 and it is finally Game Over. The Little Man is asleep. And we are tired of this hour-and-a-half Festival of Bedtime. Hopefully over the next few days we can turn it into more of just bedtime.
Shah, right. As I said. We are SO screwed.
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One of my friends had a similar problem. Since her son's door had a gate, she would put him in bed, say night-night, and then leave him alone - regardless if he cried or not. Several nights, he fell asleep on the floor right by the gate, but he learned that wasn't getting him anywhere. Eventually, he just started falling asleep in his bed instead.
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