34 days ago  7 comments

but the tigers come at night, with their voices soft as thunder

So D seems to be much improved in nursery school - he still cries and thrashes when I leave, but by the time I've left the building and gone around the side of the school to peek in the back window he's peacefully participating in whatever free play activity they have going on first or reading a book with one of the teachers. When I come to pick him up he's often happily puttering around in the play kitchen or sitting with some other kids. We've even come down significantly in intensity from the height of the "hug-a-Mamas" - which was basically my name for a couple of weeks there - and he now seems cool with there occasionally being some physical space between us when we're at home. As long as I'm in line-of-sight, you know.

However, the sleeping problems continue unabated. He's touchy about napping, but it's not really that difficult to get him to fall asleep in a stroller and then be transferred to his crib. Nighttime, though, is an arms race - we let him fall asleep in our bed and then transferred him to his crib in order to avoid his new habit of screaming when he was put in his crib. To avoid being moved asleep, he wedged his arm around mine so he will wake up if I try to move. I got sneakier about how I positioned myself so he couldn't do that; tonight, he fell asleep in our bed with his eyes WIDE OPEN - I assume in order to catch us if we tried that moving him trick again. L's been trying to calm him by stroking his back while he's lying in his crib, but once D got wise to the fact that L tries to gradually sneak out on him, D now jumps up the moment the shadow changes in front of the door. He then cries and yells "Daddy! Open the door! Please, Daddy! Where is you?" for about 15 minutes before falling asleep, which totally breaks L's heart.

God, I hope we get past this soon.