Daylight savings! We did it. We saved the daylight. I'm happy that I can take Savvy dog for a walk while it's still light outside now instead of the creepy damp dark walks I've been doing for the past 4 months. Jared usually gets home from work kind of late (but he only works 4 days a week so it's a tradeoff). By the time he gets home it's a quick dinner and then the kids' bedtime. Jared does bedtime so he can have a little time with the kids while I take Savvy dog for her walk.
The first week or two of this month, Jack was having a really rough time with sleep, which hasn't happened in years so it caught us off-guard. He was scared and would call out to us all evening until he fell asleep, and then he'd wander into our room sometime after midnight every night, scared, and spend the rest of the night with us. It got bad enough that Jared was having to lay in Jack's room until he fell asleep, which could take a while. This last week I had an epiphany and offered to take over the nightly "check-ins" instead of Jared and it immediately fixed the problem. When Jack was having his last bout of sleep issues nearly three years ago, what finally fixed it was doing regular check-ins (every 15 minutes in the beginning, then every 20 minutes, and finally every 30 minutes for the past two years). It's usually between 1 and 3 checks before he's asleep so not a huge deal. Jared would do the weekday check-ins, and I would do bedtime and check-ins on the weekends. When it's my turn, I always have Jack help me set a phone timer so I can be right on time for the next check. He has a clock in his room he can see from his bed, with dots at the 15, 30, 45, and 60 minute marks. This helps him to visualize when he'll see mom or dad again (on the top dot and bottom dot).
Unfortunately, Jared has historically been kind of spotty about his check-ins. He has a harder time remembering to set his timer, or check a clock to be there on time. It's been a sticking point because not only is it frustrating for Jack, but it's frustrating for ME because when it happens multiple times Jack will get scared and leave his room to go looking for someone. Usually it's me he goes looking for, and then I basically have to do bedtime all over again when it's supposed to be my evening off. So anyway, Jack was getting deeper into this cycle of being scared alone in his room in the evenings and in the middle of the night, and it occurred to me that since he's still so young, having the routine of one of us being there reliably when we said we would be there might be more important than we realized (Jack's typically pretty flexible as far as routines go, but he's still just a young guy and having some reliability in a day is important for him). So we tried switching things up for a week--instead of Jared doing bedtime and check-ins on weekdays and me doing both on weekends, now Jared is doing bedtime every night and I am doing check-ins every night. Again, this fixed the problem pretty much immediately, and we'll continue with this pattern until it's time to tweak again. I love a quick parenting win.
Well that was a long sleep tangent. Maybe it can help someone who has a young kid with sleep issues. The check-in method has helped us out of rough bedtime phases multiple times now. Worth a try. In Alice news, baby girl is communicating better and better every week. She is obsessed with the web swing we installed in Jack's playroom for his birthday. No real swing-related injuries so far, but we're going to put a hook on the ceiling to hang it up when both the kids are home together. They do great with the swing one at a time, but when they're both in there the chances of little bumps and toddler fits go up. Very cute when they're both on there and I'm pushing them, but if I can't be in there to supervise it feels dicey. It's been a fun week though. We love our happy babies.
