He slept! Oh holy night he slept!

Guys... it finally happened.

I'm not declaring the battle won. Nothing like that. But I put my son in the bed last night at 9 pm and I didn't hear from him again until 6:45 am this morning!

He slept past when I told him he could get up!

Now what did it take for us to get here? Let's review.

We bought him a lollipop that he could have only when he stayed in his bed all night (he promptly tried to trick me to let him sleep downstairs so he didn't end up on the stairs. When that didn't work, he just told me he'd get the lollipop "tomorrow", he didn't want it today, he'd rather sleep downstairs).

We tried to calmly put him back in his bed every time he gets up (to which he reacted like his mattress was made of molten lava).

We tried consequences: no cartoons, spanking. To this he responded: Screaming and running from his bed, "I DON'T WANT CARTOONS! I DON'T WANT CARTOONS!" or for the spanking, he just took them. 6 in a row from me. 2 more from daddy. Didn't matter. I could have beat him with a tire iron and he would have been fine with it so long as he didn't have to stay in his bed.

We tried putting an extra tall baby gate on his door and holding him prisoner in his own room. His response? Break out of Alcatraz! We heard loud thumping from the living room, to which we didn't respond b/c we thought it was part of a fit. I heard him yawn and it seemed awfully close to us so when we went to investigate, this is what we found:

That's my son. Asleep on the stairs.

Then we tried letting him pick out his own nightlight. His room was better lit. But he didn't spend much time in there enjoying it.

We tried making him promise other people that he'd stay in bed. I think I need to work on his ethics.

Grandma offered to buy him a race car if he stayed in the bed. This was two nights ago. And he almost did it. He only came downstairs once. And when he did, he came into my room, crawled on the floor and just laid by my side of the bed. He didn't want me to know he was in there.

To our final strategy (which I'm not convinced "worked" but it just happened to be the last thing we tried):


This is the Naroo, OK to Wake Clock.

It turns green when it is "ok to wake". The child is not allowed to get up until the clock turns green.

What did I hear this morning at 6:45 am?! (How exciting is that?! Normally the latest I hear from him is 5:45 am. This is a big deal!)

"MOMMY! It is green! It is green, Mommy!!!"

I hope this sticks. It was magnificent getting to actually sleep last night.