I am tired, yo. I shouldn’t be; it was my “off” weekend (which is to say the girls were at their dad’s) and so I should be caught up on my sleep. I should be, but what really happened was that my IO invited me to a mutual friend’s house for swimming, drinking and football (Go Pats!) and then we both ended up at my house. So, not so much with the restful sleeping. Oh, get your minds out of the gutters! What I meant was that living alone has certain advantages, like having the bed all to yourself and, you know, covers. Then on Saturday night, I went out to meet the Group of Six Five – girlfriends from ThePlaceThatShallNotBeNamed. We met for drinks and while I still got home before midnight, there was lots of drinking and then I might have stayed up a little later reading horror stories. So, yeah, not so much with the restful sleeping.
And now the girls are back. The girls are back and my chances for sleeping are pretty low. As in, dim to none. You see, Bee has done a bit of regressing lately. She’ll be up and down for a good hour after I put her to bed, crying her poor little heart out. She’ll say she wants her bear, or Gracie to come to bed, or me to lay down with her – any number of things that sound like good excuses to come get me. And then she’ll wake up anywhere from once to five times a night crying for no reason whatsoever. She goes to bed at 7 p.m. – a reasonable hour for a three-year-old who doesn’t nap, I think. And she is cranky and tired and ready for bed…she just doesn’t want to go. I don’t know if she’s afraid and prone to nightmares like I have always been or if she’s just playing me.
Which is really the reason for the post – I need some ideas. I’ve tried letting her keep a book in bed as long as she doesn’t cry; I’ve tried asking Gracie to go to bed earlier in hopes that the company would help Bee; I’ve tried lying down with her every time she’s asked; and I’ve tried sticker/reward charts again. That one might be working, but I just started it Thursday night, so I’m loathe to declare it a success after just one night. (And a half, really, since she went to be an hour ago and hasn’t made a peep.) I guess we’ll wait and see – in the meantime, flood me with ideas and float up a prayer for some sleep at Casa de Katie, mkay?
August 31, 2009 at 8:14 am |
I remember doing this with my youngest and honestly I think I finally just had to wait for him to out-grow it. Getting him to stay in bed (at bedtime) took me tucking him in again once and then ignoring him every other time he got out of bed. Not fun, but effective after a few episodes. The waking up crying I finally figured out was from an asthma medicine he was taking. It made him cry and walk in his sleep (he never remembered getting out of bed). I stopped the meds and those behaviors stopped. Obviously this might not be the solution for you.
Here’s praying for sleep in your house soon.
August 31, 2009 at 1:33 pm |
I wonder if it might be because of the big change that’s going on in her life, with Gracie going to big kids school. It may just take some time for her to adjust to her new daytime life and then her sleep will improve. If the sticker chart doesn’t work, you could try calling her pediatrician if he/she is helpful in things like this. When my kids were little I asked their doctors so many questions that weren’t specifically health related and they have been really helpful with things to try to ease whatever the situation was. Good luck.
September 9, 2009 at 12:11 am |
When the kids were here Duckling (so called in my blog) did the same thing…. I found that letting her use one of my teddy bears (I collect stuffed animals still, though most of mine are still in storage) and telling her it would protect her and keep her company, and that I’d be with her constantly because it was my bear helped a ton! Most nights she was much easier to get to sleep if she had my bear.