We had an absolutely gorgeous weekend – the sun was out, nights were cold and clear, and we even had our first frost on Sunday morning! So on Saturday, Jeremy and I decided that we needed to get the back yard cleaned up a bit, get the grass mowed, fertilized, etc. and I pulled out all the petunias that had seen their better days and all the sunflowers that had taken over (and I won’t do those again).
After working in the yard a couple of hours, I was EXHAUSTED. I made lunch for everyone, hung out while Carter played, and finally turned to Jeremy and told him I really needed to go lay down for awhile. So I went to our bedroom and Jeremy decided to put Carter down for his second nap.
About a half hour into my snooze, I hear the thumping of little feet as Carter came running into our bedroom and Jeremy came running after him. Jeremy gave me the look of death and said, “He can open the door now.” Uhhhhh – this really is the beginning of the end. Jeremy looked like he was at his wits end, so I get up and try to rock with Carter to see if he would fall asleep. He wanted none of that, so we finally decided to head to Babies-R-Us to see if there was a better lock mechanism for the door than the little plastic knob covers that Carter could rip off in two seconds.
We were hoping Carter would fall asleep in the car on the ride either to or from, but that would be cooperating with us … and of course he can’t do that. So we get home, tough it out for the rest of the afternoon/evening with a little boy who CONSTANTLY is making bad decisions. Oh, did I mention he can open doors? HULLO GARAGE! What? PANTRY? Sure, he’s not afraid of the dark! All those places that were easily off limits to him now no longer are… At one point, Jeremy asked him to leave the pantry alone, so he runs over to his little stool in front of the dvd player and just starts hitting every button he can, then turns and grins at us (he knows he is not supposed to do that).
So fast-forward to bed time. We have this new mechanism on the door that will only allow you to open it 3-4 inches and you have to push it out of the way to open it all up. Works great! However, to prevent getting little fingers slammed in the door, once it opens, it won’t close.
Did I mention that my kid has a weird issue with constantly closing gates and doors? NOTHING MUST BE LEFT OPEN. It stresses him out, he has to have things closed like they are supposed to be (happily I am glad for this, because his father used to leave cabinet doors open ALL THE TIME and it drove me crazy).
So Saturday night he is sobbing hysterically, trying to squeeze through the opening of the door. Or trying to close the door. Or throwing his toys out through the door. He would finally fall asleep, to wake up an hour or two later and do the same thing over again. Jeremy ended up staying in his room for around four hours that night. My favorite time was when Jeremy decided to just sleep on the floor next to the bed, so he brought his pillow in. Carter then had to have Jeremy’s pillow on his bed. It couldn’t be on the floor (Carter can barely fit on his bed because he has so many blankets or stuffed animals on there with him. If any one of them are on the floor, he will get up and take it back to his bed).
We roll around to Sunday morning and we head to the pumpkin patch with Denise, March, Domenic, and Cole (I will do another post on this later). Carter ended up waiting until almost 2pm before taking a nap and slept for three hours. YAYYAYAYAYAYAYAY!
Fast forward to Sunday night. Jeremy and I decided that we can’t go in his room anymore. He wakes up, cries, and we go in and we have now set a bad pattern of behavior because he thinks we will come in every time he freaks in the middle of the night. Back to crying it out again. As we were putting Carter to bed, I looked at the door thing and asked if we could tape the “anti-finger slam” mechanism so that Carter could actually shut the door. Jeremy found a way to do it, so now Carter could close the door if he wanted to.
Carter cried it out hard for a good ten minutes, but finally did fall asleep – with the door open. About 3am, I heard him cry for a quick second, then all the sudden heard a THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. He sat there opening and closing the door for about two minutes, figured everything was okay, then gave up and laid down and fell asleep. Maybe we have cracked the code? Ha, doubt it. Tonight is a whole new night.