And the Skies are not Cloudy All Day

We're going through some "sleep" trials and tribulations with Noah these days. Being a three-year-old, he's that perfect age to wreak total havoc....old enough to independently decide what he wants for himself, but still young enough that reason and logic don't go very far.

Every time I think we get a step farther, we end up going another step backward.

It started with random refusals to go to bed, or horsing around when he got up to bed and resisting actually climbing into bed. We were able to combat that fairly easily, resorting - if nothing else - to threats to take away his "bo-bo" (think Linus's security blanket) if he didn't get in bed. There is still the occasional time he'll try to get out of bed, but for the most part he gets ignored and its his job to get himself back up to bed and tucked in. Doesn't always work though -- one night this week, when Ben and I went up to bed, we encountered a passed out Noah curled up on a step halfway up the staircase.

Then came the demands for a drink or other random needs. This was combated by making sure such needs were met prior to going to bed.... and if he didn't take advantage of it then, too bad. For a while here he would come downstairs three, four, five times a night until we got that corrected.

Next came the complaints of it being too dark. This can be solved by either a night-light or by turning the hall light on and leaving the door cracked -- but the problem is that Noah and Travis rarely agree on how they want this addressed. At one point, we were taking turns between leaving the door open or cracked, and leaving it shut. This is rarely an issue anymore.

The complaint these days is the "bad dreams in his bed". This is solved by a two-step method. First, I give him a pretend vacuum cleaner for him to use to suck up all the bad dreams. Then I give him an invisible Backyardigans dream and similar Wonder Pets dream as replacements. If I don't do this as I put him to bed, I invariably have to do it minutes later, as soon as he realizes we forgot it.

We've also started playing a kids music CD in their bedroom when they go to sleep. There are about 20 songs on there, so it lasts about 45 minutes or so. It serves well as a distraction, and works wonders for Travis, who usually falls asleep within about 10 minutes.

Lately, however, Noah has been coming downstairs after the CD is over and asking for it to be started again. Occasionally he's come down twice, meaning he's laid through two full rounds of the CD and still hasn't fallen asleep. He now knows how to start the CD over himself and we've encouraged him to get out of bed and start it over if necessary.

So, last night, I noticed that he started the CD over once after his 8:30 bedtime. Then, when we went upstairs for bed at 11:00, we heard the CD playing again. Wow. Okay, then I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and, lo and behold, the CD was playing.

I was drifting in and out of sleep by this time, and marveling in my near-dreamlike stance about how much Noah must have been awake during the night, when I came to a realization.

It was the same song, playing over and over again. Home on the Range, to be exact.

So, at some point in Noah's expedition to restart the CD, he had actually selected "Repeat". And that song played over and over again, all night long and into the morning, and made its way into my subconscious such that I was singing it in my head all day today at work. But I am relieved to know that little Noah was likely only awake for an hour or so after bedtime, and not necessarily repeatedly all night long as I had feared.

The other thing we're dealing with is the occasional nightmare, and sometimes, night terrors. A few weeks ago Noah was in bed screaming something awful, and when I went up there to check it out, he was a sweaty mess and was not to be consoled. He was still somewhat dreaming, definitely disoriented, and I could not provide any comfort. He screamed about needing "that!" while pointing at a picture of Travis hanging on the wall. He wailed all sorts of pitiful cries that made no sense and could not be resolved. Ben brought out the video camera and tried to replay it for him to see if that might knock some sense into him, but to no avail. Eventually he settled

down and went back to bed without incident.

Here he is in his pitiful, sleepy, inconsolable state. Don't you just want to give him a hug?