My raging sore throat kept me on the sofa this weekend. The Christmas cards are seriously in peril of not happening on time. Whatever. I am quite certain that three year old sleep dysfunctions is responsible for my throat woes.
We’ve always gotten the kids to sleep early and without fuss around here. Sure we might forget to brush their teeth, but they were in bed before 8:00. For a while, they were asleep by 7:00. There’s some quality violent TV to watch and blogs to surf. The kids had to be in bed.
And they mostly complied with this rule, until a couple of months ago when Ian started sneaking into our beds in the middle of the night. Then he got used to sleeping next to warm bodies and he refused to go to sleep without one of us lying next to him. Soon, it was every night of letting him fall asleep next to us, transferring him to his bed, only to have him show up again one hour later.
He would be a horizontal body in between our two vertical bodies, like a big “H”. Nobody was sleeping properly. Two weeks ago, we decided that we had to reverse the sleep dysfunction in the kid. We couldn’t just let him holler in his bed. Mostly because he said he was afraid of ghosts and he sounded truly terrified. Also, because he would wake up his older brother. So, we set up camp on the floor next to his bed. When he came into our room, we would put him into his bed, sleep on the floor, and then sneak out when the coast was clear.
That worked somewhat. But he was constantly looking over to see if we were still there. The sneaking out part of the plan never worked out. So, I spent two weeks on a cold floor getting a throat infection.
Finally, one of us decided that the grown-ups shouldn’t have to sleep on the floor, so we set up a mattress on our floor for him. Again, only somewhat successful. Being in our room means that it is very easy to slip back into the bed. He really just wants to snuggle with us and assume the “H” position. Pressed against us, he goes into a deep sleep immediately and we listen to him snore on our pillow. Ferber frowns.
Anyhow, the illness brought on by the drafty floor meant that I got some serious sofa-time over the weekend and read a couple hundred reviews of Brokeback Mountain and King Kong. I also finally got around to watching the last installment of Star Wars. Review will follow.
Apt. 11d 
We’ve been living with the same problem with our two youngest (7 and 4) and have addressed it by putting a bed rail on one side of our bed, and a single on the other side between bed and wall. So there’s a HUGE space there, can’t fall out on either the rail side or the wall side, and they (sometimes) will stand for being exiled to the adjacent single bed.
We think it’s strategy on their part to keep the family from getting any bigger!
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