Nearby

"I love you so much, I want you to stay nearby always."

A touching sentiment, yes, but not what I want to hear at bedtime when the goal is Isaac falling asleep by himself. He said this last night as he flung his arms around my neck and tried to clasp me to him. It wasn't even like I was leaving the room -- I was just trying to get out of his bed so I could sit in the chair instead.

As an aside, at least it's finally comfortable for me to lie in his bed, because yesterday we dismantled his toddler bed and moved a double bed into his room. The bed used to be in the extra bedroom used by my brother Joel, but it has hardly been slept in since he moved out. (We still have two guest rooms, dear readers, including one with a queen bed, so hopefully our hospitality will not be impaired.)

However, back to the request that I be "nearby always." We are trying to gently communicate the concept that even when Isaac is alone in his room, we are always nearby. Whether he likes it or not, however, we are going to have to start leaving him alone to fall asleep, because he's becoming increasingly distracted when I am in the room. First he tries to talk to me, which can go on for 15 or 20 minutes.* When he finally realizes I'm not going to engage in conversation, he becomes emotional, which can go on for another 15 minutes. Recently he has ended up crying because I refused to get out of the chair to give him yet another hug. When he gets that upset he often wants me to leave his room, even saying "Mama leave!" rather bitterly. Then he cries in earnest until someone goes back in to calm him down.

Basically the entire system has broken down. Despite our best efforts, he clearly doesn't feel safe, or emotionally supported, or happy about sleep. On eight nights in the past two weeks it has taken him 45 minutes or more to fall asleep.

Is there hope for change? Well, for a two-week period in September 2007 he was happy to fall asleep with no one in the room with him, but it hasn't really happened since. We managed it then without ever leaving him to cry-it-out, so I hope we can ease our way into it again.

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*What does he talk about when he's supposed to be falling asleep? It's not the charming spontaneous stream-of-consciousness stuff he used to say, unfortunately. Recently his subjects have been pretty cleverly selected to delay and distract: Daddy put my diaper on too tight. I think my diaper's twisted. I don't want to sleep in a yucky pee diaper. Help me take my pajama top off. These aren't the pajamas I meant to choose. I don't like it when it's this dark. What's that shadow? Do garbage trucks really burp? Do garbage trucks really have eyes? Hey, I'm asking you a question: do garbage trucks really burp?

Okay, maybe some of it is still charming.

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I'm back to complaining about night time sleep because the naps are working out so well. In the past two weeks he's only missed one nap, and that might have been because he slept in until 8:20 that morning. So things aren't all bad.