James started off doing really well with Grace. He still is pretty good. He likes to hold her and laugh at her when she has hiccups. He apparently is having some jealousy though. He has put his intelligence to good use by finding one of the best ways (worst way for us) to show this jealousy. He has decided to stop sleeping. Grace has been sleeping pretty well, so it's very frustrating to have our previously good sleeping toddler almost stop sleeping all together. This all started at the beginning of last week. He decided that since we go check on Grace when she cries at night, he should get that same attention.
At first he just kept waking up at night. The first night it was 3 or 4 times, the second night he cried and came out of his room every half hour from 3:30 till 6. By night three he had decided to refuse to go to sleep from the very beginning plus wake up all night. We decided to put a child door lock thingy on the inside of his door so he couldn't get out. All that did was make him pound on his own door after having turned on his light and trashed his room. Next we taped his light switch so he couldn't turn the light on either and decided to just check on him once and then let him scream it out. So that just made it so he screamed and banged on the door all night. That night he only got maybe 7 hours of sleep when he normally gets around 10 or 11. Unfortunately for us a good portion of that sleep was when we were still awake. He also decided at this point to start refusing to take naps as well. He screamed at nap time for about a half hour, fell asleep for a half hour, and then screamed for an hour after I told him he needed to sleep longer.
So as you can imagine, we've been very frustrated with James. We tried several ways of both punishing and trying to get him to sleep. Right now he's been doing a little better. Two nights ago he actually slept all night and went to sleep right away. Last night he woke up 2 or 3 times, but he at least went right back to sleep instead of continuing to scream. He protested his nap a bit today, but I guess Gary yelled at him good enough to where he decided he better just sleep. I'm hoping his sleep will be returning to normal soon, I guess we'll see. Both Gary and I have been zombies this week because of him. Grace went through a growth spurt on the nights that he slept better, so she kept me up on those nights as well. Luckily I have a great husband who has let me sleep in this weekend, so I'm feeling a bit more rested.
He's still a real cute kid and I have a couple of videos I wanted to show. This is one of him dancing with Gary. James loves to dance and will ask for us to turn music on for him so he can show us his moves.
James has been going to play-school this fall. 3 of my friends and I have been doing a 2 hour school twice a week for our 2-3 year olds. We switch off weeks on who teaches, so it's nice to get a little break from our toddlers now and then. James is the youngest, so I was a little worried about how he would do. He loves it though! He struggled the first couple of weeks because those were the ones I taught. As usual, your own kid is the worst for you. I prefer that to him acting up for the other mom's though. He loves going to the other kids' houses and brings home a lot of neat crafts. We've also done one field trip with the kids. We went back to the farm that the kids went to at the beginning of spring. I remembered to bring my camera this time, so here is a video of James having fun with the chickens and goats.
Here are some pictures of him for Halloween. James and Gary went to the ward trunk-or-treat on Saturday night. Gary said James would thank everyone for the candy but didn't really say trick-or-treat. He also loved having the trick-or-treaters come to our house on Sunday. He would run up to the door and say hi and bye to everyone and he even thanked a few kids. Our child has very good manners :) He is always saying thank you and is now starting to say your welcome a lot too. He has also been good about saying sorry. Sometimes he'll randomly say sorry to me and I have no idea what for. Another sweet thing he does is ask you if you're okay if you cough or hurt yourself. We hear a lot of "ok dad? it's ouchie?" We sure do love him.
2 comments:
OH honey, I feel your pain. Emma went through this when we moved to the new house. Change is hard on kids. All I can tell you and that eventually, he will go back to normal. And just like my doctor told me," a little benedryl never hurt nobody,"....or was thay my therapist... not sure. Anyhoo. It is great advice. Good luck!
Hang in there! He'll sleep through the night again and so will you... The hardest time in my life (so far) was when Sammy was a baby and Ethan was 2. It'll get easier and James will settle back into his routine.
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