Toddler Sleep Fun
We are back in a rough sleeping stage with Jenson. He’d been sleeping great – until 745-8 a.m. most mornings…good nap, etc. He started to get his last set of baby teeth this month, and they have been the worst set so far for him. To be fair, he was never a bad teether, so we can’t complain much. But we can still complain, right?
He was fussing at night a little…and then July 3rd came around. We went to a 4th of July party at my former boss’s house to watch the local fireworks and Jenson actually stayed awake (barely) for them. He was fascinated. He fell asleep as soon as we got in the car, and slept fine that night, but each night after that was harder to put him to bed. Like 1-2 hours to get him to sleep most nights. We’d take turns…rocking him, singing, laying down with him, sitting by the crib…whatever it took. It was hard coming from when he used to want to rock for 3 minutes and would point to the crib and say “there”, and go to sleep on his own. He wasn’t waking during the night yet at least.
But now he is. The top teeth are in, but the bottoms are still making their way. We had company and went to my parent’s house, so with 10 days of disrupted sleep, we were expecting a struggle. My sister and nephew were visiting from Vegas, and my parents were in town for a few days, so it made the most sense for us to sleep in his room (there is a queen bed in there), have my parents in our room (they were getting up/getting ready really early in the morning for a car show), and my sister and Max in the other room. We are used to having 4 bedrooms, and are going to miss having that 4th now at times. He’d wake up and figure out we were in the room and want to sleep with us. Awesome. We couldn’t let him cry because we didn’t want to wake Max. It really wasn’t that bad most nights, if you don’t count taking an hour to put him in bed in the first place.
Then we went to my mom’s for almost a week. Now not only was he in a new crib/room, we were also in that room, and we didn’t want him to cry long and wake Max or the others in the house. It was also pretty warm at night because the weather was super hot and the air wasn’t making a big dent upstairs. Usually it only took 20-3o minutes to get him to sleep, but he’d end up in bed with us between 3-4. That usually happens there, so Lo sleeps on a cot and I sleep in the bed and eventually put him in bed with me when he wakes.
Now we’re back home and the first night went okay, despite the 6:4o wakeup and short nap on Monday. Last night he went down in minutes, but woke screaming at 4 a.m. I spent an hour trying to get him to sleep…sitting by the crib. He was fine and would fall asleep, but would wake or look every 1-2 minutes to make sure I was still there, so I couldn’t sneak out of the room. Lo relieved me after a 1/2 hour and then spent 15 or so minutes trying that himself before he gave up and laid down in the bed up there with him so he could get some sleep before work. When he got up, he sent me up to lay with him for the rest of the morning. He actually slept until almost 8:30, so at least I wasn’t exhausted today.
Hopefully the teeth will make their way soon, he’ll get back into a routine, and we’ll be good again soon. It’s not THAT bad, but it’s frustrating because as soon as you think you have the hang of a sleeping schedule, it changes.