The hard part about parenting a child who thrives on routines is not ever knowing “when” a routine will change.
Jonah has eloped from my supervision on 4 different occasions because he lulled me into a routine until I became complacent, thinking I could easily guess his next move, and then he just decided to destroy the old routine and bolted away before I noticed.
What makes bedtime so difficult for us is that we never really know where Jonah will be when we wake up.
It feels like we can’t ever “decompress” or fall asleep.
I mean, just “never sleeping” is a parenting option, but sooner or later, you have to shut your eyes for a few hours.
There is a fair chance Jojo will get up and climb into our bed sometime in the night.
There is an equally good chance he will stay in his bed and wake up there…
…but then there’s always that “off chance…”
You know the one…
Those “full moon” nights…
Those “give him more melatonin, for the love of God!” nights…
Those nights when we do “ALL THE THINGS except sleep” nights.
Jonah used to wander the house at night. He would run laps. He would kick me out of bed. Then, when I tried to sleep on the couch downstairs, he would find me and kick me off of the couch.
He would wake up hangry, but get more upset at the prospect of food. (The middle of the night is not the proper time to eat, you see).
I can’t begin to tell you how many late night melt downs we’ve endured.
For a long while, I would sleep on the floor in Jonah’s room, in case I had to “late-night parent.” (And I did on several occasions).
Jonah has come a long way at night. Most nights are uneventful now.
But Jonah still doesn’t typically sleep through the night. He will still wake up…
…and sometimes he will exit his room.
Most of the time, it’s to climb into bed with us. We really have no recourse for this in the middle of the night. Mostly, it’s because we don’t want to get up at zero-dark:30 to deal with putting him back to bed ourselves.
So we just try to fall back asleep with him rolling around (and sometimes babbling) in our bed for hours at a time.
But if Jonah ever got it back into his mind to wander the house (or the neighborhood! 😬) in the middle of the night,
…if we were in bed and out cold, Jonah is big enough now that he could literally do anything and go anywhere.
…so there are now alarms and cameras all throughout the house…
Chimes, contact plates, and motion sensors all waiting to send updates and alerts in the middle of the night.
All for that little bit of extra piece of mind that even if Jonah isn’t sleeping through the night, even if he decides to go downstairs, even if he decides to something totally out of his “middle of the night” routine…
…at least I know where he is….
…just in case.
#ausome