Sleep?

I started this blog about 21 months ago with a post about getting Kalin to sleep through the night. After 9+ months of little to no sleep we had finally reached our limit and, realizing that things weren't getting any better (in fact they had gone into a downward spiral from bad to worse), the time had come to teach him to put himself to sleep. We were blessed with successful results right from the start. It seemed like Kalin was ready for this step and from that day forward (with the exception of a couple of "sick" nights) we enjoyed blissful, peaceful nights.

Until now...

I'm not sure if this all started with the move or with the end of the pacifier stage or both - or if it's just coincidence. It's possible that this is just a stage that he would have gone through regardless. Since moving Kalin to his toddler bed he's been really good about not getting out of bed by himself. In fact, he would just lay there and talk to himself or to his stuffed animals until we came to get him - even if we didn't come for over an hour. It was nice to be the one calling the shots on when he got up. But there have been a few instances since we moved and since we stopped the pacifiers where he would wake up crying in the middle of the night or in the middle of his nap. We wouldn't always hear him in the middle of night for awhile and always felt bad that he had gotten so upset. So we started telling him that if he was scared or upset that he could get out of bed and come get us. It took about a month of telling him this until he finally decided to try it out. And now it seems to be his favorite thing to do. We had intended on this to be a way to keep him from being scared and having to cry for us but he seems to be using it as a way just to see us in the middle of night. Actually, we really have no idea why he's doing it and once again, just like back when he was an infant, we're faced with the questions and possible reasons for this lack of sleep. His reasoning and verbal skills aren't advanced enough to tell us why he's coming into our room in the middle of the night. He just keeps standing there saying, "I awake?". It started out with just one or two occurences a night - but recently it's gotten a little ridiculous to the point that, last Sunday, I'm not sure any of us slept from 3:15am until we finally just got up for good at 6. This has definitely meant earlier mornings for Kasey and I. For all we know this has been a normal wake-up pattern for Kalin and he's just now involving us in it.

I've read several different things online about random nighttime wakings at this age and the one that seems to make the most sense is that they start to dream more and they can have a hard time distinguishing between dream and reality. It's possible that is what is going on - it's also possible that he's just testing this new novelty of getting out of bed whenever he wants. This also seems like a good possibility since he'll get up a mere 10 minutes after we've put him back to bed. Either way I hope this phase is short lived. I was looking forward to fully appreciating sleeping through the night before the new baby comes.

Most of the advice online is to take them back to bed without interacting too much - basically, don't talk to them. Which sounds like a good idea except he asks us to pray with him every time we take him back to bed and it just seems too harsh to say "No, I'm not going to pray with you." But maybe he's just using it as a stall tactic or a way to get us to interact with him. I don't know. I guess we'll just try a few different tactics over the next few nights and hope and pray that this passes and Kalin understands that he needs to stay in bed, unless he's really scared or upset - oh, and how about not getting up anytime before 6 - that would be great.