Slumber parties

So we got the windows replaced in William's room, which is kind of a long story, but let it suffice to say that during the replacement process, we had to move everything out.  This meant that his crib had to be taken apart because it will not fit through the door of Will's room while it is assembled.  One of us (was it Rob?) had the bright idea that Will would just sleep on his mattress on the floor of our room during this process.  We sort of just wanted to see what would happen, I guess.  Will is often very fussy when we put him to bed, but being in the crib really limits what he can do about that, and generally in a few minutes he falls asleep.  If he was going to sleep on just his mattress, I envisioned that there would be a lot of crying and wandering about the room and eventually he would just join us in our bed, and actually, that is pretty much what has been happening.

When we first got his mattress set up and he noticed it in our room, he was so excited.  He ran to the mattress and lay down on it and smiled and said, "Sleep."  So far so good.  The he stood up and jumped and giggled.  Then he used the mattress as a spring board to climb onto our bed.  The he lept off the mattress and ran around the room in circles.

We tried to get him excited about the whole idea of sleeping in his very own bed in mommy and daddy's room, and he eventually warmed to the idea again.  We read stories and turned off the lights.  We rubbed his back and whispered to him.  He smiled at us, snuggled up with his blankie and said, "Happy."

Good, good.

Well, he fell out of the bed at least 4 times the first night.  Granted, it wasn't far (only like 6 inches off the ground), so he wasn't hurt.  More stunned I guess.  Each time he found himself on the floor instead of the mattress, he looked around like, "How did I get here?" and climbed back onto his bed.

And he did wander a bit during the night.  Every once and a while I would wake up and hear the padding of little feet and then barely see his little shadowed form at our door or elsewhere in the room.  It was kind of creepy but okay.

But then at some point during the night, he got tired of the fun new game of sleeping on his mattress and he started bawling and ran around to my side of the bed and crawled in beside me.  Still, I was proud of him for doing reasonably well on his first night out of the crib.

Last night we tried it again.  He wasn't as surprised, since we'd been through this drill the previous night.  He jumped and jumped and ran and ran and got all hot and sweaty again after his bath.  It was more of a struggle to get him to stay in his bed.  Rob tried to coax him to lie down by lying down himself, and although Will stayed awake, Rob fell asleep.  I had meanwhile gone downstairs because I had some real actual work do to.  As I was sitting there compiling my lecture on Callitrichine reproductive ecology, all of a sudden Will was standing in front of me, saying, "MULK."  He had gotten up, let himself out of the room, and walked downstairs all on his own, all while Rob was sleeping.

I got him his mulk and he was very happy.  I made him brush his teeth again and he was even happy about that too.  Then I brought him back to our room and he willingly crawled into his bed.  He lay down, smiling at me, as I rubbed his back and his head.  Then he reached up, touched my face and said, "Happy."  I kissed him and told him how sweet he was, and we kept giggling and whispering "Happy" to each other until finally he pointed to my bed and said, "MAMA, BED."  So I guess he thought I should go to sleep.  By that time it was almost 9:30, and although that Callitrichine reproductive ecology lecture wasn't going to write itself, I decided to call it a night.

I crawled into bed and tried to go to sleep, but William kept getting up and running around the room.  Probably about 2am, he just got into bed with us, which was fine, except he insisted on lying the wrong way-- so that his feet were in my ribs.

He was exhausted from all this running around, and he slept in until 8:30 this morning (and even then we had to wake him up).

The weird thing is that when Rob got up this morning, he found pee-pee in William's potty.  The most parsimonious explanation is that Will peed either before or after his bath, and we just did not notice it.  I actually find that kind of hard to believe though.  Will makes quite a big deal of it when he pees-- demanding to be given his sticker and insisting that he does the flush himself.  What I kind of think may have happened is that at some point during his nocturnal wanderings, he went into the bathroom, took his diaper off, and peed.  This would mean that he put his diaper back on by himself (which is the most implausible part of this whole scenario) because he was wearing a diaper when he woke up, and although it was full there were no leaks.

I don't know.  It's a mystery.

I'm not sure what tonight will bring.  The windows are replaced, but we just kind of want to go with this thing-- hoping that if we stick it out a few more nights, he will become accustomed to sleeping not in his crib and we can just move him to his toddler bed when we reassemble his room.

We'll see.

Thanks for reading!