Dreamweaver

The ever elusive issue of sleep deserves a quick update, for the sake of posterity: The Little Man is steadily becoming a stellar sleeper. Sure, he requires an hour or two less than the average five year old, but the lack of drama evens it all out :) Typically, bedtime is simple. Occasionally, he'll stay up waaaaay too late with his Uncles and Aunt and melt down, but that has become a real rarity (vs the standard when he was little. No matter how gently or timely we moved towards sleep, those first few years found the Little Man flailing either when he was falling to, or waking from, sleep. Often both. Damn those transitions!). The bedroom no longer has to be pitch black and whooshing with womb noises (though I'm now addicted to our sound machine, so...) Now he falls asleep after his book, while I quietly read mine beside him. Its so lovely, after numerous years of laying silently in the dark, waiting for the tell tale twitches to release me to the laundry.

And once he's asleep, he generally sleeps all night. Sure, there are nightmares on occasion. Or thirst or boogers or whatever. But, really, he doesn't even wake when I lift him from his screwball sleeping position and seat him for his midnight pee. I would have called you a liar had you told me this last year.

But perhaps the biggest change is his location. Or, rather, mine. I'm sleeping in the loft bed that hovers over his, while he cuddles next to E. ( I may have mentioned this little experiment when it started? ) He was really reticent to recline so very far from me (hehe) for the first few months (and, initially, his sleep steadily declined due to the change. Every night meant multiple trips up and down the ladder to reassure him I was still around :) But he understood that Papa's creaking in our crappy loft woke me from my highly sensitive slumbers, making me even more highly sensitive the next day (read: grumpy). So, sweet kid, he gave it his best go. And now, he's totally cool with it. Every once in a while he requests that I sleep down below "like you used to, Mama," and I snuggle up tight for the night. But that seems to satiate him for another month or so. And so, post laundry, I find him curled into E's chest, or flung across E's back, with my rock like husband comfortably unaware. I think P secretly enjoys being able to snuggle all night again (having required body contact to sleep since he was born) because once he stopped night nursing, I always ended up shoving a big ol' pillow between us to protect my light sleep. Now, after patiently waiting for years for his kid to cuddle him, E is only too happy to let his boy burrow in for the night. Its been a good change. In fact, P's even requested E put him to sleep some nights. And, honestly, there really is nothing sweeter than climbing into the loft late at night and looking down on them all piled together, both lightly snoring (and thus, the sound machine stays... ;)