At the beginning of this week we purchased a bed for the little man, three days later it was delivered. Very impressed by the service Oz Design Furniture (Auburn). Next day I purchased sheets, mattress protectors, a quilt and pillows. I washed everything and last night was the night.
The night Eli will sleep in his own bed for the first time and the night we will commit to putting him back into his bed every time he woke up and crawled into ours.
We started the bed time routine at 9pm. Any earlier he's not tired enough and just makes us tired trying to force him to sleep. We read books, sang songs, practice the skills he knows such as the alphabet, counting to 20, 'where is your ....', said a prayer then finally I told him 'it's lights out'. So we turned off all the lights and he started his nightly ritual of tossing and turning until he found his "sweet spot" for the night. By 10:15pm he was asleep.
I went to sleep around 12:15am myself. I'm going through waves of insomnia lately. I recall hearing him wake at one point at night but Ian was still awake. I could hear them talking and playing. (Argh! he should've put him back to sleep straight away, not encourage him to stay awake.) I heard him eventually make it to our room but Ian quickly took him away and closed our door. He came back banging on our door crying, poor baby. Ian must've gotten him back to sleep because I recall waking at one point and only Ian was next to me.
Then in the early hours of the morning I felt someone pulling against my side of the bed, then climb over me and snuggle into my arms. He looked at me with his big eyes and smiled. I smiled back and for a split second was content of having him back in my arms, but I knew letting him stay would be three steps back. So I continued to hold him in my arms and together we walked back into his room while I told him "lets go back to your bed." We snuggled and instantly he was asleep. I thought about staying in bed with him, but again I knew he had to get use to being alone in his own bed. I waited a few minutes and returned back to my bed.
He's growing up so fast. He really isn't a baby anymore but my little toddler man. I say to Ian sometimes "remember when he was a baby and he was quiet?" He's got such a big personality now it surprises us everyday cause the son we knew a few weeks ago didn't normally do this or act like that or say those words.
We're actually disciplining him now too. We give him warnings before we enforce the punishment. We opted for the "time out corner" method. We did started saying the "naughty corner" but he picked up the word naughty quickly and says it all the time. A word we don't really want him repeating or believing he is, so we changed the label to "time out" instead.
When we place him there we explain to him why he's being put there and tell him how long he has to stay there, usually 1-2 minutes. Surprisingly he quickly picked up that he must stay in that spot for as long as we tell him, although he does attempt to escape from the spot sometimes. Other times he fake cries while he's there too. You can hear sobbing sounds and he has placed his hands over his face but the moment you tell him he can leave the corner, the sobbing immediately stops, hands come down from face, he says a cute "sow-wee" and smiles. What Ian and I find funny though is sometimes we've only given him a warning that he'll be put in the time out corner but he'll be already walking himself to the spot sometimes crying too, making it really hard not to laugh.
Eli, you are such a joy.
