Someone kindly pointed out to me today that I haven’t posted any new pictures this week. So, here’s your weekly dose of baby cuteness:
Molly took this picture today. As you can see, Patrick now holds his head up like a champ. This is pretty new for him. What’s also unique is he doesn’t really look like Alex in this picture.
Speaking of Alex, it’s been an eventful week for him, too. The biggest change for him is he’s now sleeping at night in his big boy bed. He’s napped in his bed before, but he’s never slept there at night.
It was a contest of wills to get him to sleep in his bed for the first time on Tuesday. After his normal bedtime routine of a bath and a story, I asked him to go sit on his bed. I’ve gotten this far before. And like all of the previous times, after 30 seconds, he started saying in this plaintive tone, “I want my criiiib….”
In the past, I’ve given in at this point. He’s just so happy in his crib. And him being happy and quiet at nighttime makes me happy, too. So in the past, I’ve always taken the lazy route, carried him to his crib, and then enjoyed a quiet evening.
I don’t know what made me decide that this was going to be the week that things would change. Whatever the reason, I was determined on Tuesday to sit with him as long as it took for him to fall asleep on his bed. I was not going to cave and carry him to his crib. Much to my surprise, it only took 5-10 minutes before he was ready to fall asleep. And in those 5-10 minutes, he was really chatty. It made me realize how much his language has improved over the past 2-3 weeks. In those few minutes, he told me, “When I get older, I’m going to go to preschool. I’ll play with the big kids. Devon [a kid in his class at daycare] will go to preschool, too.” He talked on and on about preschool.
He eventually decided to stop talking and fall asleep after I kept telling him how much we’d be proud of him when he slept in his big boy bed. I told him we’d call Grandmom in the morning, and she’d say, “Yaay, Alex!!” when we told her he slept in his big boy bed. That story made him happy, and he fell asleep.
So far, he’s slept two full nights in his bed without incident. No falling out of the bed in the middle of the night (he’s done that before while napping and in a hotel – I’ve put his big MGM lion between him and the edge of the bed this week, and maybe that helps). Surprisingly, he doesn’t get out of bed during the night or in the morning. He’s now in the middle of his third night of sleep in his bed. Let’s hope the peaceful trend continues. After all, we could really use that crib now for Patrick…
(A postscript. Alex’s memory surprises me at times. This morning, when I went to get him out of his room, I was conscious to praise him for sleeping in his big boy bed. “Yaay, Alex!!” I told him. He looked at me sternly and said, “Daddy, you’re not Grandmom.” He remembered the story that got him to sleep in the bed two nights earlier.)