My Little Houdini

Nolan goes to bed at night without any complaining. We’ve stuck to the same routine for two years and he falls asleep within five minutes. When we check on him before we go to bed, he’s still in the same position we laid him in, sound asleep, looking like a peaceful angel.

Nap time is a totally different story. We follow the same routine as we do at night, but when we lay him down, he instantly pops up. He’ll be in his crib for an hour before finally giving in and closing his eyes. And sometimes, even after an hour, he won’t fall asleep so I have to go in and rock him. When I do that he falls asleep within two minutes, so we know he’s tired. But there are some days when he just refuses to sleep. It used to be about once every two weeks. Now it seems to be every other day.

He just can’t seem to shut off his mind. He talks, sings, yells, jumps, tosses and turns and does anything else to keep himself awake, including removing his clothes. We can tell when he’s undressing himself because he gets very quiet, so we can usually catch him before his diaper comes off. But we have still had to clean up quite a few messes! We started letting him bring books to bed, thinking he’d be distracted. Nope. He reads for about twenty minutes, throws them out of his crib and then the clothes come off.

We’ve tried everything. We started putting him in pajamas at nap time. That stopped him for about three days. So we put a safety pin in the zipper of his pajamas. This worked for about a week, until he figured out how to undo the safety pin. We tried diaper pins that even I have a hard time unclasping, so Nolan just climbed out of his pajamas through the neck hole. That skinny little kid can get his entire body out without unzipping! So my husband bunched up the top of Nolan’s pjs and then put in the diaper pin and then wrapped the pin with electrical tape. That held him for four days. Jacob walked in on him yanking the pin so much that it bent, unhooked  and stabbed him. You can see the marks in this picture.

Seeing your baby bleed is never fun! Jacob immediately looked online for more solutions. He found Little Keeper Sleepers - sleepers with a non-stretchable neck that zip up in the back with two-way snap closure at the top. Totally child proof!

But of course they are sold out of Nolan's size. I’ll be checking back every single day until they are in again. In the meantime, we had to figure out something else to do. I ended up cutting off the feet of a pair of his pjs and putting them on backwards. He thought it was so cool to wear pjs and socks at the same time. I think they look totally uncomfortable with a high neck in the front and pant legs that keep riding up, but he has yet to complain. And so far it's working!

Poor kid. He looks so ridiculous. If you moms out there have any other ideas, please let me know!