bedtime battle

Up until recently, Eden's bedtime routine was simple: Cuddles whilst singing the bedtime song/prayer, tuck him in, a bit of fingerplay or silly sounds and a giggle then wave goodbye going out the door. By this stage, Eden's eyes would be beginning to roll back and his hands would be up by his face, one holding the other, sleeve being sucked - at least 90% of the time anyway. Very cute.

Since the advent of manoeuverabiltiy, Eden gradually realised that he could turn over - which was scary for him at first and then you guessed it - crawling around began to happen and- even better, standing up and banging the wall or just violently rattling the side of the cot. At first these things occurred when he first awoke...

Now the bedtime routine is kinda interesting: Cuddles and singing the bedtime song/prayer, wait until he seems to be getting the idea (Pavlov's dog) ie, the sleeve is nearing the mouth, attempt to put him in bed while he struggles to grab the bars of the cot, carry on turning him over to be on his back- trying to get him to lie still for more than 2 seconds, attempt to tuck him in quite tightly, turn him around again and attempt distraction with mock biting fingers or something, fair run out the door having quickly pulled the guard thingi up, in time for Eden to have started to pull himself out of the covers again.

A few minutes later, you'll either hear him gurgling his way to sleep knowing he is in some upside down around the wrong way body position or you'll hear some kind of banging and have to go and repeat steps 1 through 5 again! (Unless he's sick then he's either asleep as soon as he's tucked in or there's some crying to contend with). Poor wee thing. When he had a fever last weekend he would wake up and whimper every sleep cycle -sometimes with his head resting on the cot bars or something uncomfortable like that! This was how we learned that he was venturing around his bed during the night rather than just in the morning.

He's still a great sleeper -don't get me wrong. And now that he has changed from 5:30am wake up to 7:30am wake up - positively blissful!