Tuesday Morning

Woke up in the toddler's bed at 6:45 am. Or more accurately, he woke me up!It's funny how our life is right now; last night when I came home fom Pilates my husband had put the toddler to bed and fallen asleep next to him. I waited downstairs thinking he was going to wake up and come and watch 24 with me. I waited an hour and realized that wasn't happening, so I went up in the toddler's room and told my husband it's time to go to bed. Oh well, so much for watching our favorite show together. Good thing we tivo'd it!

I may have slept an hour when the toddler woke up the first time. I crawled into his bed with the intention of just laying there until he fell back asleep. Well, two hours later I woke up feeling stiff, and went back to my bed. It didn't even take 20 minutes before the toddler came running into our room. I wanted to let my husband sleep, so I took the boy by the hand and said, "Let's go and sleep in your room together!" So, there we went, another night of choppy sleep went by, and my husband and I did not get to sleep together again.

I've had a lot of comments from so called well meaning friends who think they have the answer. They say things like "Just let him cry!" or here is another brilliant advice "Put a lock on his door!" First of all, I don't see how letting him cry lets anybody sleep. We have three girls who have work and school, and they need their sleep at night, secondly, he'll just walk out of his room and in to ours. It's not like he stays in his room and cries. And I'm sorry, but the locking his door advice is just downright cruel. There is a reason why he is waking up, and I have already discussed this with my pediatrician. There actually are kids whos brains are wired differently; they physiologically can't stay asleep for several hours. He said about 25% of kids sleep a lot less than the norm. Also, at this stage nightmares and night terrors are fairly common, so if he's scared I'm not going to ignore it. I don't believe that will remedy the situation. I believe this is a phase and that he will eventually outgrow it! So, until then, I'll have to live with the dark circles under my eyes!