I’ve been working with Graham on going to sleep and continuing to sleep without too much movement (because it keeps him safe now that he can crawl out of his crib and hopefully will help him once the big boy bed arrives) and I have also been working on introducing blankets, stuffed animals, and a pillow. He usually tosses and turns until all foreign objects are thrown out of his crib and his sleep sack is removed and then he can settle into sleep.
Well, today, after an intense morning (we hosted PEP, starting with an 8:00am run to the doughnut store and going strong until our last guest left at 1:45pm) Graham was primed to fall asleep and I thought I would do some experimenting.
I put his blanket and pillow in the crib.
Oh, by the way, his ‘pillow’ is a thin chair cushion covered in a pillowcase. It is sort of like a toddler sized memory foam pillow. It is only about 2 inches thick and is working really well as his first elevated-head experience after spending almost 2 years with his head flat against an extra firm crib mattress.
Graham tossed the pillow and blanket out of his crib and unzipped his sleep sack and threw it out of the crib as well. He did some jumping around and general crib play, but didn’t try to climb out (which is a huge improvement since he acquired the skill). When he started unzipping and removing his footed PJ’s I decided to try putting them on backwards so he wouldn’t be able to reach the zipper.
Then, out of the blue, he said “monkey back” for his stuffed monkey, “sleep sack back on” which I ended up putting on backwards as well, and “big boy pillow in crib.”
He settled right down and voila! I caught a glimpse of what our big boy will look like in a big boy bed <3
Here are a few pictures from the morning PEP play date that helped facilitate the 3.5+ hour with-pillow nap:
Ahhh, and now that our sleepy little dude has woken up, he is kindly modeling his backwards pajamas:
so funny and cute!
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