On Sleeping and Such

For the last week or two Zane’s sleep habits have been changing. Probably due to the season changes, but it could be just that he’s getting older and changing too. Nap time has been getting later and more difficult to instigate, and after the nap he’s often very teary or grumpy. Meanwhile his bed time at night has been getting later. Well, we put him to bed around the same time but him actually falling asleep is getting later with a whole bunch of “fake” crying in the meantime.

Saturday I figured we’d try skipping the nap altogether. Zane was all for it “No nap!” and other than missing out on my own nap I was pretty much for it too. We had a busy morning with dump run, home depot run, egg hunt, and lots of running around at home. That afternoon we did some other things and then played a bunch. Around mid-afternoon Zane went into the family room to play with his toys. He played and played and around four I went upstairs to start a batch of Posole. Zane quietly played, calling once for “a lil’ halp?” but otherwise kept himself busy. After a while I noticed it was really quiet and went to check on him. Sound asleep (photo above) on the family room floor. So much for the nap-free day!

We haven’t had any luck since then and Sunday night he spent a whole hour alternating between falling asleep and saying ‘wa-ha-ha.’ For a kid who can imitate and mimic almost any sound he’s pretty bad at faking his own crying.

Last night was different, not a single peep, and we owe it all to the Solar System, which Janet and Tyler gave us as a hand-me-down. There’s nine glow-in-the-dark planets and two sheets of glow in the dark stickers with stars, moons, and comets. Faith and Zane played with the planets yesterday afternoon and then when I got home he wanted to play some more. I suggested we hang the planets up in his room and he was very excited about that. So we hung planets with care (er, trying to have slightly realistic spacing) and then stuck star stickers everywhere.

Zane spent the next hour randomly going into his room to shut the lights off and on, hoping to see the glow. It was there but not a lot. We finally convinced him that he’d have to wait until bedtime, plus we locked the door. Bed time came and we ran into the room and shut off the light. It was pretty darn spectacular, sloppy hanging job or not. I then turned on a reading light and read a couple of books. Halfway through the second book he said, “turn off the light?” and when I asked he said “no more books.” So off went the light and we lay there on the race car bed staring at the lovely greenish glow of space. We counted the planets. He tried to count the stars. And out of nowhere he started pointing out shapes: triangle, square, rectangle! I think he meant the shapes created by the layout of planets and stars, either way it was pretty impressive.

I gave him a kiss goodnight, left the room, and there wasn’t a single peep out of him all night.