Phase, Phase, Go Away...

Wyatt is going through a stage. A phase rather. The "I don't want to sleep by myself" phase. This began about 2 months ago. Most nights, one of us will give him a bath, then we read books, and then it is lights out. This worked for years. Then, he started thinking that he could NOT go to sleep by himself. He wants one of us to lay down with him. Well, he really wants one of us to sleep with him but that is not happening.

I remember being the same way when I was little, so I have been laying down with him until he falls asleep and then leaving. But this has turned into him going to bed even later because he also has the gift of gab. It is non-stop "Mama, Mama" followed by random questions and phrases. So a 15 minute bed time routine has turned into an hour.

I began dreading putting him to bed because I knew it would take forever and I have not been feeling so good at night. I was definitely losing my patience with all of this so Jeremy decided it was time for tough love. So we went bath, books, lights out, and us listening to him cry, usually for me, for about 10 to 15 minutes. Oh, that is the worst. But Jeremy would go to his room about every 5 minutes, tell him to stop crying, and go to sleep. And eventually, he does.

The typical sob is "I can't go to sleep by myself, I can't go to sleep by myself - MAMA!!! MAMA!!!" Cry, cry, cry...

After a couple nights of that, he realized that crying for me wasn't getting him anywhere. So we were sitting there the other night and preparing ourselves to listen to the montage and out of the blue, we hear...

"SOMEBODY HELP ME!!!!"

We started dying laughing at that one. Who in the world is this child crying for? Has he become so desperate that a random stranger walking by is better than sleeping alone?

It did crack me up but then I was like "JEREMY! Go in there and calm him down!" That was just too much. It is bad enough listening to him cry for me, but feeling like he knows he can't depend on us and is willing to call out for SOMEBODY! was just too much trauma for me.

Hoping we are nearing the end of this phase before the County CPS gets called out to the Simple Life to investigate a report of neglect!