Team Robison

We were lucky enough to have my sister-in-law Melissa and nephew Ayden stay with us for the first two weeks of March. Melissa came out to look for an apartment for when Aaron gets back in April from his deployment. Now that they are older, the 3 month gap between Matthew and Ayden is much less significant than it was when they were infants. Matthew loved having Ayden here. They played pretty well together; though, of course, they each had their moments of territorialism. The interesting thing was that they each quickly learned how to say the other's name. All in all, it was a wonderful visit.

Helping Daddy get the high chair ready for Ayden.

Matthew and Ayden

Ayden riding Nova

Chasing Nova

Ready for bathtime

The easiest way to get Ayden to take a nap.

Dressed up at Grandma's house

Matthew decided he wanted to clean the windows at IKEA.

Mark was Ayden's favorite.

Hugs

Trying on my boots

Mark and the boys

Matthew and Ayden

The Picture That Launched a Thousand Tears

This is the story of Matthew's new bed. It all started with the above picture. On the last day of January, Matthew was being super cute. He got out his stuffed animal Rex (thank you, Jacob and Serene) and then went to the kitchen and got a small mixing bowl and proceeded to feed Rex out of the bowl. It was so cute I decided to take a picture. Of course, Matthew stops feeding the dinosaur so he can cheesily pose for my photo. He's cute, isn't he?

After I took the picture, Matthew wanted to see the picture, and then wanted to play with my camera. When I didn't give him the camera, he decided to throw a gigantic fit. I let him throw his tantrum for a bit and then tried to pick him up to console him, but he squirmed down and was determined to continue his fit. If he wanted to continue his fit, that was fine with me. However, then he decided to take his anger out on me and tried to chuck the little bowl at my head. Sadly, he has a bad habit of wanting to throw things at you or hit you when he's mad. We are definitely working to break that habit. I decided it was time for a time out. So I picked him up screaming and kicking and put him in his crib and shut him in his room. It was around naptime anyway, so I figured he'd either fall asleep, or he would be much more cooperative when I went in to console him in a few minutes. To my surprise, neither of those two options occurred. Within minutes, I noticed that his crying was noticeably louder, and then I saw a little hand protruding from under his door. Matthew had learned to climb out of his crib!

This new situation presented a problem. Lately, Matthew has been great about going down for naps during the day, but has been in fits about the mere mention of bedtime. Fortunately for us, we had actually already bought a new bed for Matthew and we were already planning to pick it up from the store that evening. We decided to buy a bunk bed that splits in two, and just use the top bunk as Matthew's new bed. Matthew's daring escape from the crib (and I have no idea if he went head first or feet first. All I can say is that i didn't hear a thud) made it so we did an immediate switch to the bed, instead of coaxing him into it.

Night #1: Mark put Matthew to bed as usual. About 20 minutes later, Mark and Matthew both come downstairs. "He didn't want to stay in his room," Mark tells me. Well, of course, he doesn't want to stay in his room. My solution: we lock him in there, and he will figure it out. I'm not much on the sympathy at bedtime. So we lock him in his room, and he cries for about 20 minutes - not having taken a nap, he was pretty tired. The question was, where was he sleeping - on the bed or on the floor next to the door? When Mark and I went to bed, we peeked under the crack at his door, and didn't see him, so we opened up his room and he was curled up sleeping on his bed. Success!

But not total success. At about 2 a.m. Matthew wakes up crying. I decide that I will go in his room and try to coax him back to bed. I even brought a pillow so that I could sleep in his bed with him, if he needed me to. Matthew laid down with me for a little bit, and then decided it was time to get up and play. And then he decides that he wants out of his room. So he goes and paws at the doorknob and then comes and tries to yank me out of bed to open the door, and then starts to cry again because I won't let him out of the room. So now he crying just as much with me in the room as he was before I came into the room. Realizing, that things were going to end badly no matter what, I just locked him back in his room to get it over with. Verdict: If Matthew wakes up crying, just ignore him and he will go back to sleep. If you try to console him, it won't work, and crying will turn to screaming when you leave. Also, the next morning, I found him sleeping right next to the bedroom door. :-(

Night #2: We didn't give him a nap that day (which was very hard on me, especially since I was sick at the time), so we were counting on exhaustion to aid us. Mark locked him in his room. He cried for maybe 15 minutes this time, and then fell asleep on his bed. I think he woke up once in the night, but we ignored him and his crying quickly stopped. In the morning, he was still sleeping in his bed.

By the third night, Matthew slept all night without crying. We still didn't give him naps, though he started to crash sometime between 4 and 6 p.m. and we'd let him sleep for a little bit. He still needed a nap, but I didn't have the heart to lock him in his room twice a day. Every night the crying got less and less. And after a few nights, you didn't have to race Matthew out of the room, he would let you walk out. On Tuesday morning, I woke up to what at first I thought was Matthew crying to be let out, but was actually just Matthew playing in his room. He even let me sleep in for maybe a half hour more before demanding to be let out. By Wednesday night, Mark was able to lay Matthew down in his bed and even tuck the covers in. Matthew still cried, but he stayed in bed.

Thursday was a miracle day. We had a play date in the early afternoon and then I had Activity Days at my house. About an hour before Activity Days, I changed Matthew's diaper in his room. Then he got up, crawled into bed, and waved bye-bye to me. I was shocked. That's what he would do at naptime when he was in his crib. So I said bye-bye and started to walk out of his room. My elation quickly faded as Matthew got out of bed as if to follow me. To my utter surprise, he shut the door to his room on me. I guess he really did want to take a nap. A few moments later, he regretted his decision because he cried a little bit, but he did take a nap. It was wonderful. I was able to get things ready for the activity, and even had time to drink some hot chocolate and read a book. To top it off, when bed time rolled around, Matthew went down without crying at all.

I only have one last story for this very long post. Yesterday, I tried to see if Matthew would repeat his naptime experience, but no dice. In the evening, we ate dinner and then Mark let Matthew down and they started playing in the kitchen. I usually don't eat dessert right after dinner, but I had made brownies earlier in the day and had been tempted by them all day, so I wanted brownies right away. We even decided to give Matthew some brownies - which is extremely rare; we usually never feed him dessert. I put him in the booster chair and he started to throw a fit (another thing we've been battling over lately - whether he can sit in a regular chair or in the booster chair). He even refused to taste the brownies - which I'm sure would have cured his fit right away. So we let him down and he stomped off crying. To our surprise, he went upstairs and shut himself up in his room. He even shut his door twice to make sure it latched. Mark and I about died laughing. He cried for a few minutes, and then fell asleep. He did wake up after about an hour, but he was still really tired. So we were able to put his pajamas on, and he cuddled up with me to watch tv and was asleep again in about 20 minutes. And when I put him to bed, he just cuddled right up without a complaint. I still have to laugh when I think of him putting himself to bed. Fingers crossed that our bedtime woes are cured for now.