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Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Guy and the Pack-n-play

So this post is for any of you wondering how our vacation went with Guy being able to climb out of the pack-n-play.

Our first day there was Thanksgiving. That night, we put the kids to bed, and I grabbed a book and settled on the other bed, until they fell asleep. Guy wasn't in his bed 5 minutes, before I heard Cinderella call "Mom". I looked up, and saw him straddling the edge of the play yard. I told him to get back in bed. So he did. Then looked at me and cried. I told him to lay down. It took a while of me repeating that, before he finally laid down. Then we repeated this process about 3 times, and then I decided to just start telling him to lay down every time he stood up. I think he was asleep within 30 min.

The next day, he was acting really tired. So we put him down for a nap. He laid right down and went to sleep. So I was a little over confident that evening. My husbands Aunt and Uncle were visiting, and Cinderella didn't want to go to bed. Guy was getting tired however and asked to go "night-night". So I took him down, got him his blankets, and stuffed animals, put him in bed and left him there. Less than 5 min. later he was crying at the bottom of the stairs. (we were sleeping downstairs, but everyone else was upstairs.) Daddy went and got him, and after that it was a battle all night to get him to go to bed. I still ended up down there reading my book telling him to lie down, but he was really unhappy about the whole thing and I spent probably about an hour or so down there.

Saturday, my kids spent the day at the house of a family friend. He didn't get a nap all day, and when we took him back to Grandpa's house, he fell asleep in the car. He would not be roused. I debated as to weather or not I should just put him down right then and there, in his clothes and everything. I decided not to, because it was earlier than I wanted him to go to bed, and he hadn't had dinner yet. I was afraid he would wake up in the middle of the night and be really hungry. So we let him take a short nap, until we had dinner ready. Unfortunately, by the time we got him to bed, he was over tired. And I was wiped out. I had finished my book the night before, so I decided to read my scriptures while I waited for him to fall asleep. I don't know how long it finally took, because I fell asleep before he did. My husband had been waiting up stairs with his brothers for me to come and join them in a game. He finally called it a night, and came down to find me asleep.

On Sunday, I really wanted to spend this last night interacting with family, instead of putting my kids to bed. I'm sure my selfish decision made this night a lot longer than it needed to be. We put the kids to bed, and shut the door tight, so that Guy couldn't come out on his own. We decided to see what he would do. Well, we started a game of Taboo, when my brother-in-law thought he heard someone slam into the door down stairs. So he went to check on the kids. He found both kid sitting on the twin bed looking at books. We decided that was an acceptable option. The door was once again firmly closed. Well about 2 min. later, both kids came trudging up the stairs. I let the men handle them this night. And they were taken back down stairs. This battle went on for quite a while. Sometimes we would let the kids stay up for a few minutes. Other times they were taken promptly back to bed. This lack of consistency probably also made it a bigger issue. Finally about 9:00 I realized it was going to take Mom stepping in for anything to happen. I took them downstairs, and sang to Cinderella, and continuously told Guy to get back in bed, or lay down, until Cinderella finally went to sleep. Guy kept crying that he wanted to be in bed with Cin, I finally decided to ignore him. He finally climbed out of his bed. But didn't really want to be in bed with Cin, or lay on my bed. He was over tired, and didn't really know what he wanted. I finally took him back upstairs, where they had finished their game, and were getting ready to go to bed. He rocked with Daddy for a while, and looked at a book, until he settled down. Then we took him back down, put him in bed, and got ourselves ready for bed. After a while he decided to just lay down and go to sleep.

So, I'm not too excited to put him in a bed that he can easily get out of. But I guess we will see what happens. Maybe being able to climb back in on his own, won't make it as big of an issue.

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