Saturday, January 5, 2008

Big Boy Room - Moving In

We decided that moving Sam into his big boy room and into the big boy bed when we came back from our Christmas travels would be the easiest way to go. He was already out of routine, had slept in many different places, and thus would be easily led to his big boy room as, simply, his room.

Convincing Sam that the new room was indeed his room was not hard. He was extremely excited about the new room, especially once we put his new car sheets and car quilt on the bed, Christmas presents both. He wanted to jump on the bed, roll on the bed, snuzzle the bed. When it was time for supper the day we returned, he did not want to leave the room to eat, and after his bath, when I told him to call for mom and head for his room, he headed straight for the new room.

Mission accomplished, or so we thought.

The problem with the big boy bed is that Sam is no longer confined. So instead of playing on the bed in the daylight, he adapted to playing in the dark and went about his business. He has a difficult time calming down at night because the room is a bit too exciting, even though we haven't moved any toys into the room yet. Thursday and Friday nights we tried laying down with him, but he just climbed all over us. We held him close and rocked a bit and that seemed to help, but we don't want to get in the habit of rocking him to sleep again - we've been down that road. The thing is, once he's asleep, he stays asleep and doesn't come looking for us or get up and play until the morning. On Friday morning, he even overslept:
Hopefully we'll be able to figure out the settling down part and the drifting off to sleep part since all the other parts of moving to the big boy room were so successful. Well, that and the jumping on the bed part.

2 comments:

Liz said...

Nate is similar in that he needs rocking in a dark room to calm down. Once he's calm, though, I can lay him down awake. Well, most of the time, ha ha! Have you tried rocking him in a dark room just until his eyes droop? Just a thought. =)

Sarah said...

Ah, the joys of moving a child into their big bed. It has honestly varied from each of my kids. One thing that helped my oldest was putting one of those temporary bed rail on her bed so she wouldn't roll out. That helped but then she discovered her new freedom and started trying to wander the house at night. The only thing that worked for her was a baby gate at her door and threats of bodily harm- lol. My youngest daughter has a rail around her bed, so that helped to keep her in. Nightlights seemed to help a great deal too. Just keep in mind, this too shall pass.