As mentioned in the previous post, at the start of the month, we moved Leo from his crib into a bed and moved him from his own room into a shared-room situation with Max. It's amazing to think how much the boys' sleep routine has changed since that day.
The first night was a disaster: both kids were overtired and decided that jumping on their beds and generally ignoring us would be the best thing to do at 11:30 p.m. To be fair, they had just arrived home from Winnipeg to see their new room and new beds for the first time but it was still mayhem. The second night, Leo was kind of upset so one of us stuck around for a bit before remembering that we wanted to cut short this routine of hanging around in his room for an hour or more, waiting for him to fall asleep.
Then, the most peculiar thing happened. Over the following four nights, I don't believe the kids were ever awake past 9:00, nor did they ever require more than 30 minutes to put to sleep. Best four consecutive nights in a couple of years? From some points of view, heck yeah. From what I can figure, the emotional stress of the re-entry into daycare took a lot out of the kids and so when it came to putting them to sleep, nothing was difficult.
On the weekend, things were not quite as good, but still not a disaster. The most interesting shift was that the kids suddenly decided to change their wake-up time to 6, not 7. Not surprising, given that everyone was getting to bed an hour earlier.
The highlight of the past two weeks definitely happened last night. When I left the bedroom, Leo was upset, but I was determined to give him at least a bit of an opportunity to settle himself. I hung around the door and then heard Max trying to settle Leo. Max went over to Leo's bed, hugged him a few times and offered some words of support and repeated the process for a couple of minutes until Leo was quiet. Three things occurred to me: 1) Max will never cease to amaze me; 2) my kids will do a great number of amazing things that I will not be party to...that's a little sad to me; and 3) it's possible that Leo still "needs" someone in the room with him to get to sleep, it's just that the person in question now is Max, not a parent (why didn't we try this months ago????).
This afternoon, Max stunned me again. I had slipped a treat in his lunch and told him it was for being so sweet and helpful at bedtime last night. When we picked Max up at daycare, I asked if he liked his treat. His response? "I didn't eat my sugary junk because I never ate all of my peppers and cheese." Wow. I never indicated that those were the rules so that was all him. Now I'm really starting to feel like I'm going to miss out on a lot with the kids and I spending so much less time together in the future. Sigh.
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