Matthew's Favorite Sleeping Games

Turns out Mr. Matthew has a sense of humor. As in a, let's see what I can do to make Mommy want to pull her hair out at 3:00 am in the morning, kind of humor. I have come to recognize that he has 3 favorite games to play in the middle of the night. Luckily for me, I got to play all 3 last night!

1. The Scare Tactic. I am pretty sure every mom out there has played this before. He falls asleep while eating. I mean REALLY asleep. He doesn't budge when you stand up from the rocking chair, not even when you stumble on a pacifier and have to catch yourself. You slowly and carefully lower him into his bed, all the while praising the Lord for making this so easy tonight. And then....right when you turn to walk out of the room, BAM!! His eyes pop wide open! You jump because it was, well, just plain scary, and within .01 seconds, he is screaming as if you had left him there for days. And the routine starts over.

2. The Fake Out. This one is possibly the most frustrating. He falls asleep easily. You lay him down (and since he has already played The Scare Tactic, his little eyes stay nice and closed as you lower him into his bed) and quietly walk out of the room. Again, you praise the Lord for your good luck tonight! You crawl back into your nice warm bed, cuddle up next to your hubby (who of course has slept through the whole ordeal, including the previous game of Scare Tactic) and just as you start to doze off, you hear it. Those first little sounds that indicate he is not really asleep. We all know those sounds. They start nice and quiet, just a few little baby noises coming from the monitor. There might even be a minute or two between noises. And then, just as you begin to cringe because somehow you know it's coming....the full fledged scream. And the routine starts over.

3. The Refusal. This one seems innocent at first, but about 10 minutes into the feeding, you start to worry that he might be trying to pull a Refusal on you. While you are feeding him, he gets nice and relaxed. Might coo a little, look up at you with those beautiful, big, baby eyes, things are great. However, after about 10 minutes of feeding, when he usually starts to get drowsy, you realize, "oh crap....he isn't getting drowsy." In fact, when he starts playing The Refusal, he might get more worked up as the feeding goes on. Maybe his eyes catch the black and white on his curtains and he refuses to stop looking at it. Maybe he decides that he is going to drop a load in his pants that can't be ignored, therefore assuring a diaper change after the feeding. Maybe he just wants to be totally innocent and while he eats, he bats his little eyelashes and smiles from behind the bottle (he knows full well you aren't going to be mad at that....) And so, as he finishes eating, he is still wide awake with absolutely no intention of going to sleep. This is a tough one for all moms because we all know at that point, that it could be a pretty long time before we go back to sleep in our own bed.

So those are Matthew's top 3 night time games of choice. We have played all of them a lot over the past week. I am hoping we can teach him a new game this week while on spring break....it's called "please go back to sleep before mommy has a nervous breakdown."

Of course, he might think mommy having a nervous breakdown is funny and therefore add that one to his rotation of games......Sigh.....