they way we do

We moved the boys to "big boy" beds about a month ago.  It happened by default.  I would have loved for them to stay in their cribs much longer but Mr. Alex had other ideas.  So like most other developmental milestones we moved forward with "big boy" beds because it was simply time to do so.  Alex had been having difficulty sleeping for several nights leading up to the big switch.  I would have to spend the nights on the floor in the nursery holding his hand through his crib.  Talk about super uncomfortable for this old woman.  So we let the boys pick out new sheets and we made a very BIG deal about the transition.  Kara actually made them toddler platform beds for the floor and we have them sleeping next to each other.  Both boys transferred without a hitch.  They slept for almost a week with zero issue!  Yay!  But then Alex started to struggle BIG time.  We are talking about some serious sleep regression.  Alex would no longer fall asleep on his own at night.  And he was waking up in panic several times a night.  So after walking around like zombies for several days we made another big decision.  Time to drop the nap.  (insert eye rolls from my readers)  Just like sleeping was getting to be a struggle in the cribs we were both starting to absolutely dread nap time.  It was a fight to get them to sleep.  And then it would be a fight to get them awake.  Because if it was up to the boys they would nap for 4 hours and then stay up all night.  So we dropped the nap.  Cold Turkey.  And it has been a really good thing for us.  Jakob has not had a problem at all.  And of course he never had a problem transitioning to the "big boy" bed either.  Mr. Easy.  Alex will still need a cat nap in the afternoon on most days.  But we just let him shut his eyes for a bit when it becomes too much.  And so how is Alex sleeping?  Not horrible.  Not the best.  We've gotten into a new routine and while we are probably not following any of the rules in the parent handbook our new sleep routine works for us.  The boys are going upstairs to take a bath about 6:30pm each night.  We do story time, video time, and music time each night after bath.  This all takes about 30 minutes.  I then tuck the boys into bed and I will sit by the door until Alex falls asleep.  He knows that I am going to leave when he falls asleep.  We communicate this over and over again each night.  It usually only takes 10 minutes for the boys to fall asleep as with no nap the boys are fairly tired at night.  There are some nights I have to get them to cut off the chatter but it is usually not a struggle.  I am then downstairs and able to get stuff done no later than 8pm and on most nights it is 7:30pm.  And then Alex will wake-up.  Every night.  The good news is that Alex typically does not wake-up until between Midnight - 5am.  So it's not a big deal.  Kara will simply go into the nursery and grab him out of bed.  Alex will then sleep the rest of the night in our bed until I get up for work at 6:30am.  Jakob will sometimes wake-up too when Alex wakes-up but he just looks at us like "Please remove that noisy child from this room" and promptly falls back to sleep.  Alex will always fall right back to sleep in our bed.  We fought this in the beginning because every parent handbook tells you to NEVER let your child start sleeping in your bed.  We tried all the tricks in the book.  But no one was happy.  And no one was sleeping.  And here is the thing.  I know Alex.  I know exactly everything that goes through that little dude's head.  And I know that each night he just needs the comfort of Momma and Mommy.  He falls asleep most night holding my hand.  And we can provide comfort to him.  So why not?  I know for a fact he will not be sleeping in our bed when he is 18 years old.  So we are embracing it.  We aren't going to have these moments forever.  We will miss them when they are gone.

Mary