Sleeping

So the last couple of weeks Zach hasn't been sleeping so great.

This is REALLY fun for a 9 month pregnant woman who is thinking about all the sleep she will be missing very soon.

He has always been a good sleeper, but lately he has been waking up at about 5 and not going back to sleep, or at least not for long. The main reason: He can climb out of his crib.

I had planned on letting him go in a big boy bed this summer, but since we don't have our own house to do that in- still in the crib. But now that he can climb out of it (in under 5 seconds too) we have been trying to figure out what to do. One night last week he woke up at 3am and ran into Wayne and Roma's room and swung the door open and yelled 'PAPA!!' Other than that, it's just really hard to get him to stay in there and take a nap.

For all the rest of Zach's life I have tried to get him on routines and schedules so that it will make our lives easier. That means a few hard days to get used to something, like not eating at night when he was a baby. It is hard, but then the reward is always there!

This time, I was too tired. I have been doing anything to get him to sleep- usually letting take a nap in my bed with me and with some boring show on tv. It got him to sleep in about 10 minutes usually, so it worked for me. But it wasn't fun and I figured there had to be a better way!

So I found some crib tents online. I read a bunch of reviews saying how well they worked, so I was deciding that would be a good option for at least a few weeks since I need all the sleep I can get this next month! Except there aren't any stores that carry it anywhere around here, and the one I found on Craig's List fell through. So yesterday afternoon I decided that was it. I needed to forgo my afternoon nap in order to restore good sleeping habits.

I decided I needed to make his crib REALLY appealing. He likes to sleep with his blanket, pacifier, 'bear' and 'dog'. So I decided that even though these things don't come out of the bed THAT often, from now on they CANNOT come out of the bed. So I laid him down and told him to stay in his bed, or else he wouldn't get to have any of his favorite things. Then I waited. Seconds later he came running out. So I took out his pacifier and put it in his crib and let him know it was staying there with everything else. Then we went on my bed and laid there, no tv or anything fun, with my arm over him. Torture! He cried and cried for a few minutes, then I explained again that his stuff was in his crib and if he wanted them he needed to go to sleep there. Repeat this 4 times, and an hour later he was asleep.

He woke up after only an hour and fifteen super groggy. He cried at everything and was clingy. Eventually he was fine, but it took a while. I wondered how bedtime was going to go...

We got him ready for bed and told him he could go up there and listed all his favorites. He went right up there and stayed in bed the first time! Wooohoo! He woke up during the night and when I went in he was staying on the side of the crib, whimpering. So I put my arm around him and he laid down on his own with his blanket and was asleep. Next time we heard from him was 7 this morning when John heard him wake up...so he peeked in there and he was snuggling all his favorites :) He asked if he wanted to come out, so he brought Zach in to our room. I was sleeping on the bed and Zach freaked out. We realized he was freaking out cause he figured he had to sleep with mom- Ahh!! So I told him he didn't have to sleep and we watched Little Einsteins.

He walked back to his crib before we went downstairs, cause he wanted to take dog with him. John told him he couldn't take dog since he stays in the crib. He was fine with that and we came downstairs for his morning banana.

So hopefully this keeps working! He is such a good kid at getting used to something and sticking to it (which is why he has been so good about waking up at 5 every morning without fail...)

My mom, dad and Caitlin are coming to stay this weekend, so I am hoping he gets back on a schedule and sleeps a lot better in preparation for all the craziness ahead!