Bedtime Drama

Well, it last almost a year to the day....lack of the bed time drama! About a year ago...we moved Zach into a toddler bed in the anticipation of Mark's arrival. By looking back at my posts, it seemed we had about a week's worth of bed time drama before Z got used to his new bed. And after that, he has been easy most nights since then! Until this week....

I think it maybe started with vacation and getting out of routine, followed up by the fact that he figured out the childproof door knob cover we had in his room. On Sunday night, he busted out after we had put him to bed, and because we were in the middle of dinner, we let him stay up with us while we finished eating and watched tv. Come Monday night.....he wanted me to lay down with him, had bad dreams (even though I don't think he has a clue what the means especially since he had not even been to sleep yet), etc etc...basically anything to keep from going to bed. Scream, cry, get out of bed. I'm not even sure how we finally did it but we did finally get him to sleep, maybe from sheer exhaustion.

Now come Tuesday night....REPEAT! The kid does not want to stay in his room. And after about an hour I swear of holding the door closed, I gave up and let Matt take over. Matt got him calmed down and thought asleep....but then about 15 minutes later, I heard the door open....but no Zachary into our room. After about 30 minutes, my curiosity gave way and I walked out and found him laying in the hallway, awake but by a thread. I carried him back to bed and he finally went to sleep. Only to wake up at 4am.....and at 630am as I was walking out the door for work. YAAWWNNN!!! Oh yeah, and thankfully Mark slept through this all both nights. Praise the Lord!

So, after posting about this on facebook, turns out that A) this is a pretty common occurrence and that many other people also put those door knob covers to trap help keep their kids in the rooms and B) time for me to be super nanny at bedtime and each time he gets out, no words, no eye contact, no whatever....RETURN BOY TO BED. One friend said it took 47 times the first night but by the end of the week her son was not getting out of bed. So, I guess that is my plan for the night and hopefully by the end of the week, we will be back to sleeping. I did go to Babies R Us for back up though and bought this, and plan to install it tonight on the door, and if he doesn't go crazy, hopefully it will contain him and convince him to go back to bed!! :)

All in a day in the life of a momma!! How did YOU get your child to stay in their bed??