Sleep in heavenly peace

This is Christmas carol lines week here at the Corner! Every post this week will have a line from a well-known Christmas carol as the title. Tell me all of them at the end of the week – either via email or in the comments – and win some as-yet-to-be-determined prize!

Sleeping has become quite a chore for Tad recently, and I am seriously hoping that he outgrows this phase really soon.

It all started on Friday night. Auntie was babysitting the kids for us – it was the Webmaster’s company Christmas party, and who doesn’t want to eat here. I mean, really. The seafood chowder is to die for, and when it’s free, you would be an idiot to pass it up.

On our way home, I got a call from Auntie on my cell phone. “Tad won’t stay in bed,” she told me. “I keep putting him down, and he just starts to cry and follows me out of the room. We’re sitting on the couch right now, and he’s happy, but he just won’t fall asleep!”

“Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “I’ll deal with it when we get home.”

But when we got home, Tad wouldn’t stay in bed for me, either. He was positively sobbing his little heart out if we even tried to leave him in his room – and besides the crying, he was just hopping out of his toddler bed and coming to us, wherever we were in the house.

He finally did fall asleep in his bed – with me sprawled out over him to keep him from popping up, asleep, on my knees, which hurt terribly when I woke up. But he was out, so I breathed a sigh of relief and went to bed myself.

Saturday morning, I got up and found Tad’s bedroom door wide open. He was not in his bed. Surprised, I went looking for him – I know full well what kind of damage he can do when he’s not supervised – and I found him curled up on the couch in the living room, fast asleep. He was adorable. His bed was cold, so I knew that he hadn’t just gotten up recently. I was also stunned that he chose to crash on the couch instead of coming into our room to crawl into bed with us. But I threw a blanket over him and let him sleep until Ane got up – and she wanted to know what he was doing out there, sleeping on the couch.

His nap on Saturday was a nightmare. We shut his bedroom door so he would stay in there when it became obvious that he wasn’t going to stay in bed. He cried for a full 45 minutes, and I had my hands full with gingerbread bear cookies, so finally the Webmaster took pity on him and settled the sobbing boy in bed with a little extra TLC. Saturday night, we shut his door again, and the crying lasted for maybe 5 minutes before all was quiet.

Right before we went to bed, I asked the Webmaster to check on Tad, just to see how he was. He tried, and then immediately came to get me. “You HAVE to see this,” he said, silently laughing.

Tad had fallen asleep right behind the door, having brought his blanket and pillow with him, and we couldn’t get the door open enough to get in the room.

I finally managed to squeeze in, with the Webmaster pushing the door open as much as he could – and dared. I picked up all 30 pounds of dead-weight boy and put him in bed, and he did stay asleep, thankfully.

Sunday was a little easier – he stayed in bed for his nap, and at night he did get into bed, though he had Mommy’s head in a death grip hug. I couldn’t get up until he was sound asleep and I could disentangle his arms from my head.

I really want this phase to pass soon, or Santa is going to have a hard time at our house this year.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 1:07 am and is filed under Children.
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