JUST GO TO BED!!!

Sorry, still having a few issues around bedtime.

We had an amazing weekend in Essex and we headed home Monday afternoon. Callum fell asleep in the car around 3.30pm-4pm! Disastrous!

Unsurprisingly, he wouldn't sleep when it came to bed time. We tried at his old bedtime of 7pm but he kept getting up. He got up 7 times within one hour. We first tried the Super-Nanny approach of picking him up without words, putting him in bed and leaving the room again....it didn't work! (we tried for about 1-1.5 hours) We tried the Mean Daddy/Mummy approach....it didn't work! In the end, I threatened him with taking one of his teddies away for every time he got out of bed. He stayed in bed - hooray! The time was 9.50pm!

That meant he was ridiculously tired for nursery the next day. Apparently, he was a real monkey and obviously tired but didn't nap. I thought he was bound to go down easily that night. Nope. I put him down to bed and left the room but suspected he would get straight up so I stood outside and held the handle up. Sure enough, he started tugging at the door and then got upset when he couldn't open it. I gave him two warnings - each after about 5 minutes of crying while I held the door handle up and he tried to open it. Then, I took Raffi (stuffed giraffe). Big tears but I thought he had learnt this time and so I went downstairs. He got up so I took BoneyM (crappy monkey dog toy present thing from Santa). Fine as I left the room then as soon as I shut the door he was beside himself. I suddenly had a thought so I opened the door and he stopped crying but I could hear him trying to catch his breath back after being so upset. I now felt bad...maybe he just wanted the door open and I had taken his two toys :o(

So, tonight! Again, he gets up twice despite me leaving the door open. Then I take Raffy again. He gets up and starts to come down the stairs. So I take BoneyM. He bursts into tears. I take him to bed making sure he knows why I am taking the toys and he just needs to stay in bed otherwise next time I'll be taking Teddy. The next minute...Teddy and YoJoJo come flying down the stairs! Seems he isn't bothered. He is standing by the upstairs banister with a smirk on his face - how can he know how to be so bloody petulant at his age???

I take him back to bed and take Teddy but give him back YoJoJo (despite him throwing him down stairs) and FINALLY he stays!

Tomorrow, I will go back to taking him to bed at his old bedtime and will assume he has got used to no nap during the day. If that doesn't cure the getting out of bed issue I may need to form a new plan! If the new plan fails - whatever that may be - I may just make good use of our oversized shed!!!!

Wish me luck!