The Who Knows How Many Nights CHALLENGE

Here we are! Our introduction to the toddler bed!!!! We've prepared ourselves by knowing that this probably won't be the easiest transition, nor will the training happen overnight...but we're going to stay positive and try to have some sort of game plan for the nights we find Barrett venturing throughout the house...or near our bedside.

The set up. He seems excited. I think he senses the freedom within a few inches away (see the gap in the side rails?)

Practicing night-night time. Upon the first practice I told him this was his new bed for night-night. He thought I was telling him to go night-night, and laid down on the floor. Poor guy.

Practice #2

Since I don't have anything to really compare it to, I felt the first night Barrett slept in his bed went pretty well. Here is how it went down:

We went through our normal bedtime routine and Barrett was fast asleep in no time at all. Then, 4:30am hit and we heard crying. Immediately, Matt and I both ran to his rescue (mainly to see exactly where and what he was up to). We found him trying to climb into his rocking chair. I guess he planned on rocking himself back to sleep! ha ha

Being somewhat prepared for this to happen, I laid him back down onto the bed and told him that it was still night-night time. He seemed to be very sleepy rolling onto his tummy, so I continued patting his back and humming to him. That seemed easy...right?

After a few minutes, I decided to leave the room, and his little head popped up like he was wondering, "Hey...where are you going?" He followed me out of the room into the hallway where he ran into his big, tall Daddy (who he knows means business when it is night time and has to work the next day). Matt tried rocking him to sleep and Barrett put up his best fight. I sat on the couch in the living room praying, while Matt had to suffer through Barrett crying and trying to break free.

Not too much longer, and Barrett had fallen back asleep.

Matt and began to do our victory dance a little too early though. We saw Barrett's shadow soon appear in the glow of the hallway nightlight.

As fast as we could, we froze in our places on the couch just waiting to see what Barrett would do. We heard him scurry across the carpet, with his stuffed monkey in his hands and suddenly he came to a dead halt at the end of the hallway. He peeped around the corner and noticed all the lights were off. "Hmmmm," he thought to himself. He dropped his monkey on the floor, and hauled booty back to his room. I could hear him crawling back onto his bed, then OUT again. What???? Poor little guy was crawling back out to come get his monkey that he had dropped in the hallway. We saw his little shadow scoop it up and then run back to his bedroom for the 3rd time.

If only Barrett knew that we were right there, camping out watching the entire thing. It's a story I'll have share with him when he has kids of his own

Okay...so we were set. We heard him visiting with all his little stuffed animal friends (tiger, monkey, and lion). I knew eventually he would talk himself back to sleep.

Then I messed it all up. Ugrrrr

I couldn't help but tiptoe around the corner to check on him, and when I did...he saw me. He ran after me this time. By this point, I knew the poor child was completely confused, so I picked him up and rocked him until we both fell asleep.

Better luck tonight. I'm not giving up...but I am going to wait a bit before we decide to get rid of the paci. I've got to keep my sanity to some degree! ha ha

(I know the post is more than you probably bargained for...but I had to write all the details so that Barrett could look back on it someday)