Yesterday we put Ryan down for a nap. When it was just a little over 7pm, it was high time to wake him up, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to sleep later in the night. But he was so tired out that he just didn’t want to wake up.

He was quite cute and was still responding to my questions although his eyes were shut tightly. And when I changed diapers for him, he still helped by lifting his hips so that I can remove the shorts and diaper and then to slide in a fresh piece.

But he refused to open his eyes and he said he wanted to rest. He looked so tired with little dark circles under eyes. But for his own sake, in the end we still had to force him awake and he cried for quite a while. It took some 10 to 15 minutes to get him to stop and to lift his mood.

Anyone has any good ideas on how to wake a sleepy kid without all those protests and cries? He normally isn’t like that, but when he’s real knocked out and tired, he tends to oversleep his nap time. Any help out there?

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Although Ryan is coming to 2 years old very soon, he’s still waking up in the middle of the night for milk feeds. He does it at least once, sometimes twice a night. So 2 nights ago when he stirred and mumbled for milk, I thought I’d try to get him to stop his midnight feeds by telling him that I’ll get his milk in the morning.

After some persuasion, he agreed but he insisted on water. He drank up till the last drop of the full bottle of water I gave him and went back to sleep. But not without talking funny to me before he dozed off. He would say the oddest of things in the wee hours of the morning and even asks to see his Bob The Builder toy, or grandma or some uncle.

It’s actually quite amusing to be half asleep and listening to him ramble on like that. Fortunately he doesn’t go on for long and after a minute or two of funny talk he will doze off to sleep again. And then I too doze back to sleep, but with a smile on my face.

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Every night is a pretty routined thing for us to put the little boy to bed together. About a quarter of the times I would actually fall asleep before he does or at the same time. Only to awaken in the middle of the night to go lock up the house and go back to bed. Last night was another one of those times except that I locked up everything beforehand.

Usually only one of us would lie in bed with the little boy as he tends to take up quite a lot of space on the bed, sleeping every which way he turns and stretches. I normally would accommodate and squeeze by the edge of the bed to make room for him. Yeah, yeah, call me a push over who lets her son bully to the maximum, but I’m quite happy doing that.

Last night all 3 of us fell asleep on the bed. Then sometime in the middle of the night I stirred and rolled onto my sides. That’s when it happened…

*THUD*

My better half and I woke up from that loud thud.

He: What happened?! What was that?

Me: Urm…

He: What happened?!!

Me: I fell off the bed.

He: How come??

Me: Not enough space la…

It’s really funny for me to think about it now because I remember sitting in a daze on the floor, wondering what the heck just happened to me. I don’t remember feeling any pain from falling off the bed, only recalling how dazed and shocked I was. And through it all, my little one slept ever so soundly without knowing that his mummy had shamelessly fallen off. So shy okay!!

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My babysitters (both old and new) used to tell me that because my boy doesn’t sleep much, he doesn’t seem to be putting on weight. To them, healthy eating and sleeping habits are sure ways for the boy to grow. I tend to agree.

He’s a very happy and active boy who stops at nothing. He wouldn’t voluntarily go to bed in the nights or take a nap in the daytime even when he is feeling tired and sleepy. He would continue to play or walk and run about. Before, he used to sleep in the sarong at night and during nap time. It is quite easy to gently rock him to sleep in it, provided you manage to get him into the sarong without much fuss.

But now, he’s been trained to sleep on the bed and he is refusing to go into the sarong. In the nights, through some effort, we can still manage to make him go to sleep. But in the daytime, it does prove a bit more difficult as he wouldn’t stay in bed for long at all, much less to fall asleep.

So I do wonder whether he’s getting enough sleep just counting his night time sleeping hours, because he doesn’t get much sleep in the day. At most, maybe he’ll nap for 2 hours or so in the day time. In the night, he gets about 9 hours, 10 hours at maximum.

I did a search and found that toddlers between the age of 1 and 2 need between 10 to 13 hours of sleep throughout the day. So my boy is just about making the mark for healthy sleeping habits. What about your kids? Are they getting enough sleep?

How do you make them to go bed if they are resisting it? Or are you the lucky parents whose kids would voluntarily climb up the bed and snooze?

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Remember I was talking about how my little boy was asking for milk a lot more often ever since I moved him up a stage from Enfalac to EnfaGrow? Well I’m happy to update that he’s now not consuming as often and is back to his usual milk feed frequency. A quick check with the shopkeeper about the contents of the milk powder revealed that EnfaGrow is supposedly easier to digest and thus it could be the reason why the boy was initially asking for more feeds as his body adjusts to the faster burning rate of the formula. I think by now his system has adjusted and he’s less “addicted” to the milk.

We continue to feed him with more solid food throughout the day and supplement with milk whenever he asks for it. In the nights, we’re getting more hours of uninterupted sleep as he has gone back to waking up once, at the most twice to ask for milk. We’re happy to be getting more rest as it was worrying for us when we had to wake up thrice a night.

For those few weeks when we were so exhausted from waking up, we even thought of changing our bed to a more comfortable sleep number bed if this trend continues for long. Our logic was that if we aren’t getting enough hours of sleep, at least having a good bed should help to make us more comfortable in our sleep. Of course good beds don’t come cheap, and yet we are aware of the benefit of having one. I guess for now, since times are so uncertain and we are getting back our regular hours of sleep, we will just hold off the purchase.

Speaking of beds, the boy is still not taking to the bed when it comes to sleeping. We tried recently to encourage him to lie down on his bed to sleep but he got up in less than five seconds! He just wouldn’t lie still. So back he went into the sarong for the night and is still doing so. Though the more experienced mothers keep telling me this is okay and one day he will just learn to stay still and fall asleep on the bed, I do wonder if it will really  happen just like that!

But whatever works for now is fine by us. We’re just happy to gain back some sleep and the fact that he’s back to his regular feeding habit. It’s a big relief!

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