Sunday, January 31, 2010

I'm Awake!!!!!!!!!


For the record...I can totally relate to this picture.

Oh, Brother the last two weeks (well frankly, the entire month of January) has been a wash when it comes to sleep in the Jackson household. Brent has a major deadline at work and has pulled extremely late nights every night of the week, the little miss has struggled with an ear infection, and Ethan...well, he's the reason I'm writing this post.

Starting about two-and-a-half weeks ago Ethan began waking anywhere between 3am and 4:30am. How do I know this? Because he yells from his bed at the top of his lungs, "I'm Awake!" Over and over until either Brent or I acknowledge his wakefulness. So, upon the announcement, one of the two bleary-eyed parents in our household stumbles their way to his bedroom and firmly tells him it's still night-night time. You'd think that would be the end of it right? Oh, no. This happens a couple more times, followed by a firm chastisement and warning of a spanking for announcement #2 and typically a spanking on announcement #3. This is every night (err...I mean morning) my friends. Can I add, that our disciplining is NOT WORKING.

I look haggard, and you can imagine what the hubbs looks like after already being at the office late.

So, I'm pleading with you, for the sake of the tremendous bags under my eyes, I will take any advice you have to offer. How do you keep your little ones in bed? Or rather, how do you keep your little ones QUIET in bed?
Thank you. I'm going to lie down now.

3 comments:

Mary @ Giving Up On Perfect said...

Ugh! I don't have any advice. Annalyn has been waking up just 30 minutes early, and she also will holler until once of us gets up with her. The frustrating thing is that SHE is also exhausted - why don't kids just SLEEP when they're tired?!?

I guess if I have to give advice (I really wish I had something more helpful to say here!!), I'd say to nap during the day when he does. OH - does he still nap during the day? What if you shorten his nap, assuming he still takes one?? Would that help?

OR, could it be that something in your neighborhood is waking him up with noise? I've wondered that about Annalyn and her new early rising business...???

Heather said...

Oh Nikki, I can totally sympathize! For what seemed like forever, Emma used to wake up in the middle of the night and scream, "I need attention!!" at the top of her lungs. She would continue to scream that until one of us went in there and gave her some attention. The attention she was looking for was a hug. We finally learned that if we gave her a hug, she went back to sleep pretty quickly. But if we went in and gave her negative attention (yelling/punishing) she would cry and scream and carry on for a much longer time. It drove me insane! Dakota eventually became the one who would go in to deal with her every time, for fear that I might do her some damage one fateful night. ha! I swore we'd never be able to have other children, b/c she would wake them up in the middle of the night and we'd have multiple people shouting/crying for attention. I wish I could tell you what the magic trick was to get her to stop, but I don't know. All I know is once Ashlyn was born, she stopped.

Mary has a good point about looking at his daytime napping. Maybe he's ready to give that up, if he's waking so early in the morning. Or maybe there's something you can teach him do when he does wake up, like turn on a white noise machine to help put himself back to sleep. Another friend of mine has had luck putting a clock (with hands) near her daughter's bed, and telling her she can't get out of bed until the little hand is pointing at a certain number. Maybe a version of that might work for you.

Good luck!

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