Dare to Dream

Anticipation

It's been a long week.  But one look at that face of Tate's yesterday at Disney on Ice - Dare to Dream made it all worthwhile!!!

He is fighting going to bed tooth and nail.  He hates it.  As soon as I give him the warning that 'after this, we're going upstairs for a bath-bath and then night-night' he starts crying and wailing about how much he doesn't want to go night-night.  I try to give him warning for the transition, but not too soon because I don't want him to start crying sooner than necessary.  I'm letting him play etc until 6:30 or a bit later these days because he is so not ready to be in bed at 7 like he was for the first 2y6m of his life.  And I get that...I do.  He's getting older;  he needs less sleep, but come on child you have got to give me something here.  For instance STOP WAKING UP BETWEEN 5:30 AND 5:45 every damn morning.  He has been falling asleep this week no sooner than 8:30 and each night I have put him in the crib around 7:45 wide awake.  Not 15 minutes later he is standing up crying for me.  At almost 3 I'm thinking CIO (which I've never done) is not the way to go.  He gets worked up and is then awake longer.  I know this because the first two nights he did this standing up crying business I let him go for about 15 minutes.  I finally went up and it took 30 minutes to calm him down enough to go to sleep.  The last few nights I just went on up as soon as he started fussing, rocked him a bit more for maybe 10 minutes and he was out.

So, is he not sleepy?  Or is he craving time with me during the week?  He's even woken up a couple of times in the middle of the night calling my name wanting to get in bed with me.  I always go get him....we're in the same room.  And he tosses and turns all night or at least has the past week, so I get feet in the head, back, stomach..you name it.    I actually put him back in the crib last night around 2am after putting him in bed with me at midnight when I woke to see him talking to me standing in the crib (scared me to death!).  

He does still nap at daycare...almost 2 hours.  From 12-2.  Does he not need the nap?  I think he does.  Though when he skips his naps he doesn't lose it in the evening.  He is quite even keeled.  Though then he does fall asleep fairly early (7:30), but not early enough in my opinion.  But when I even think the word nap here at home he loses his mind.  The past 2 weekends I opted to have the naps occur in the car each of the weekend days we were together, and he slept at least 60 minutes if not 90 all of those times.  But the beginnings of the naps were fraughts with tears in the car about how he didn't want to nap.  This weekend I decided we were going to nap at home.

I am crazy.  

Around noon yesterday I put him down, only to have him shaking the crib and fussing about it immediately.  After 20 minutes I went up and rocked him and he fell asleep almost immediately on my shoulder at 12:20.  I moved him too soon though or interrupted the sleep because he woke around 12:45.  I just put him in the crib anyway and let him have some quiet time.  I came back to the room around 1 and told him I was going to lay down for a bit and asked that he play quietly in his crib.  I actually slept 30 minutes, okay maybe I dozed, but I rested.  

Today's nap was the same battle.  Tears, crying, flailing about.  I put him down around 12:15 to no avail.  I went back up and rocked him at 12:30 and he fell asleep around 12:40.  I put him on the crib, and he slept until about 1:45.  Better than nothing.

But I 100% feel like he needs these naps.  Because he no longer makes up the missed sleep at night.  In fact he's waking earlier and earlier.  

I do not get it.

And worse on the weekdays I would like him to get up at 6, so we don't have to rush around.  We eat breakfast together.  I would totally miss that.   There's no time for playing etc, though when the alarm goes off at 6 he has usually woken me up already, but I refuse to move until 6.  I let him watch a couple of Thomas YouTube videos until about 6:10, just to give myself a chance to snooze.  I have to have us out the door at 7:20, so we have an early start.  If he slept til 7 we would be racing around like crazy people, so that would not work.  And with a toddler there is always a chance of a tantrum, or 'let me do it' which makes our morning routine go that much slower.  Because if you don't 'let him do it' the meltdown will cost you another 20 minutes.  :)   I love love love the extra time at night, but I'm still rushing to pick him up.  There is no give in my schedule whatsoever.  And if I run late then it's an absolute disaster.  And I am not in a profession that has strict hours.  Which is why at my previous job, before I returned from maternity leave Carl and I discussed changing my schedule, so I was always leaving by 4:45.  That worked great.   I don't have that kind of flexibility anymore;  in fact that last hour of patients is usually packed totally stressing me out.  So him staying up later is so much nicer.  But I still worry about him not sleeping enough.  Is this why he wakes so early...because he is so sleep deprived?  I just don't know.

And I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about his sleep. This is ridiculous.  I worried so much during his infancy that I barely remember anything about that first year.  So ridiculous.  I look back at pictures thinking all I'm going to see if myself worrying myself sick of his sleep habits, and I'm always shocked to see us laughing and having fun together.

I need to try to just ride this out.  

But please could he just sleep until 7 a couple of weekend mornings?  And ummm not on Easter Sunday when I need him up at 6?

So, to balance out this complaining post I'm going to rave about our great weekend.  Yesterday we went back to the Music Together Class that we attended when he was an infant.  We started going when he was about 5 months until he was about 18 months, and then I put him in Gymboree classes until this past December.  So, we're back.  We had a really nice time.  I highly recommend this program...Tate had so much fun when he was younger.  It was so awesome to see him light up to the music.  It'll be interesting to see what it does for him this go around at this age.

In the afternoon we headed out to Disney on Ice - Dare to Dream.  This particular installment is about the 2 newest princesses...Tiana from 'The Princess and The Frog' and Rapunzel from 'Tangled.'  It of course also included the most famous Disney princess of all...Cinderella!!  I knew Tate would have a blast whether it was princesses or trains, because he LOVES shows!!  And I knew since Mickey Mouse would be there he would be over the moon.  I, of course, being the very girly girl I am loved the whole princess part.  I oohed and aahed with every other 4 and 5 year old girl out there at the end when ALL the Disney princesses were presented from Mulan to Arielle to Belle to Snow White.  All of them.  If I had a little girl, she would be in bows and tutus all the time.  I'm serious.  All the time.  My house would be a pink, frosty, sugary sweet confection of Barbie and Disney princesses.  So Tate will have to indulge my girly needs every once and a while.  And today he has insisted upon watching the ice skating on the computer or the tv, so I googled the show on YouTube and he happily watched the 'little girls' ice skating from snippets of video of the show.

Cinderella on the way to the ball.

I thought these costumes were just gorgeous.

Yes!  I let him eat popcorn at the show!!  Unbelievable!!

Tate's favorites!

I see this movie at work ALL the time.  I actually really like it!

The floating lantern from Tangled

All the princesses at the end!

Today, we didn't go to church.  Instead we headed out to Whole Foods to grocery shop, then we spent the entire day at home.  Tate LOVES being at home.  He routinely will say in the car "I want to go home and play with my toys."  or simply "I want to go home."  I'll suggest going to the park and playing outside and nope he wants to go home.  We are always on the go, and I decided he needed to just be in his comfort zone and play or do whatever he wanted.  So he watched more YouTube videos of Thomas, the ice skating and whatever else he asked for than he has in his lifetime.  We did puzzles, we played cars, he entertained himself while I cooked and prepared for the week.  My parents came over in the afternoon and hung out with us as well.  It was a good, good day.  

Home.  

May he always want to come home.