Enjoy It! and Hang in There!

I've learned two things in my short tenure as the parent of an infant, now a toddler:

1) If something is going well in the life of your child, "Enjoy it!" because it will probably only last a week or two.

2) If something is not going so well in the life of your child, "Hang in there!" because it will probably only last a week or two.

As I mentioned in my last post, we transitioned Brady to a toddler bed. He took to it like a champ and bedtime had became both predictible and smooth.

Step 1: Bath and/or jammies.
Step 2: Read three books in the glider and enjoy a sippy of cold milk.
Step 3: Turn off the lights, turn on Twilight Turtle and listen to three "mama" songs while settling down for sleep.
Step 4: Lay in bed and get back rubs from mom for three minutes.
Step 5: Drift off to sleep after mom leaves the room.

This lasted about two weeks and it was glorious. We wondered to ourselves this weekend when bedtime became so easy. And that should have been our "heads-up" that things were about to change.

The past two days, bedtime has been anything but smooth. Brady doesn't want to go upstairs for bathtime. Brady doesn't want to climb up in the chair for books. Brady doesn't want to lay in his bed for back rubs. And Brady definitely does not want to drift off to sleep after mom and dad leave the room. Instead, Brady is sitting up as soon as we get up from the floor and he's out of bed as soon as we leave the room. He comes to the gate at the top of the stairs screaming and he continues to cry as we walk him back to bed. Last night I gave up and rocked him in the chair until he fell fast asleep. Tonight, Tim gave up and put him in his crib. We are going to try to put him back into his toddler bed. We'll see how the night goes. Sufficed to say, I'm not planning on getting a lot of sleep. It might have to be a Starbuck's kind of morning!

So now I am hoping that the old lesson holds true yet again - and this stage in Brady's life only lasts one week versus two.