Sunday

I hate to even talk about it, but I'm really happy. I was sitting at home in my room on Wednesday evening when the TV show The Supernanny came on. If you aren't familiar with that show it has the parents writing letters and calling for help with their "unruly" kids. When the Supernanny comes over, she wows everyone with her amazing techniques and always helps out the frazzled parents when their kids magically behave.

So. I was watching this show and saw a 5 year old hitting, kicking, slapping and biting his father. And then to top it all off, he wouldn't sleep in his own bed. And then it hit me, horrible visions flashed in my head of Eddie turning into this horrible little kid. And right now he has enough of a temper and personality to warrant the term "brat" on many occasions.

Just to recap, Eddie has been having difficulty going to sleep at bed time. And I mean, he refuses to go to bed when it's time. He just keeps walking back out of the room. And then after he does finally pass out from shear exhaustion, he would always wake up in the middle of the night and sneak into our bed. Most times I wouldn't feel him climb into bed. The smart little booger that he is, he figured out that if he snuck in on daddy's side. that he wouldn't care. If he woke mommy up, he was always made to go back into his own room. So he had it made. On the rare occurrence that I awoke, I would try and put him into his bed. Even at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning he would still fight me to get back in bed. Now upon being rudely awaken in the early morning hours, mommy is not the most pleasant person there is. So sometimes after trying to put him back 6, 7, even 8 times, I would just give up. Now I'm sure that just set us up for more disaster as it has shown him that he can wear us down. Unfortunately for a period of time we let him sleep on his toddler bed in our room. Now we did this out of necessity at one point, and then to save our sanity for the next part.

Well here comes the interesting part, I tried again that night. I calmly put Supernanny's techniques back into action. I told Eddie it was going to be bed time soon and then at the appointed time, we went to the room. Every time that he walked back into the living room, I would calmly walk him back and tell him that it was bed time. I never yelled or lost my cool. (As sometimes in the past I have) It took me 1 hour and 8 minutes to get him to stay in there. It was nice. He woke up once that night at 2 :46 am. He did whimper and cry a little bit when I told him that he had to go back to his bed. But to my amazement, he stayed!!

On Thursday and Friday nights it took between 15 and 20 minutes. A bed time first!!! On Thursday he woke at 11:05 pm and easily went back to his room. Friday night he didn't wake up at all! Saturday bed time was a bit better. He came out 4 times. So I'd say it took about 10 minutes before he stayed in there! And he never woke up during the middle of the night!

I'm so happy I don't even know what to say! I mean, I feel like my newborn just learned to sleep through the night! Only, Eddie is about to turn 3. He's been giving me grief about bed time for 7 long months! I can't believe he's showing signs of a pattern of GOOD sleeping!!! Yeah!! I'm so proud of that little monkey!!!

He just better keep it up!! And now on to potty training. (((another long battle ahead I see.)))Crossing my fingers that tonight goes well too!!!