Sleep puncher



If sleep was a person, my son, Isaac, would punch it in the face. Now don't get me wrong, at night this boy is a champion sleeper (12 glorious hours a night!). I repeat, at night. During the day, all you have to do is point your body in the direction of his bedroom as if you might be walking there and he starts to yell. I literally have to prep him before I even turn towards his room by starting to sing a song he loves or say repeatedly, really loudly, “IT’S OK. WE’RE ONLY GOING IN THERE TO CHANGE YOUR SOCKS/FIND YOUR SHOES/GRAB A JACKET!” Sometimes the singing and telling him what I’m doing works…but only when he sees I’m obviously not lying. He literally doesn’t trust me. I imagine him saying, “WHENEVER I AM IN THE ROOM YOU PEOPLE FORCE ME TO GO TO SLEEP AND I NEVER NEED SLEEP!” This is so weird to me (mostly because I am familiar with behavioral psychology) and I do everything I should in his room. When he gets up in the morning or after a nap we stay in there and play in his crib, and he plays in his room on the floor for a while, so it’s not even like he only knows his room for sleep. This boy simply has an arch nemesis: sleep.

At night we kiss him good night and hold him for a bit until he relaxes and then we put him in bed in which he hardly makes a peep and falls asleep. During the day we do the exact same thing and right as you make the motion to put him down he claws onto your shirt and cries. It makes me so sad, but I KNOW that 75% of the time after I put him down he stops crying 2 minutes after I walk out and is asleep in 10. Weird, huh?

So I bet you’re wondering why I put this sesame street video up, aren’t you? Well, I was playing him videos on my Iphone and I decided to play this one because we had never seen it. He loves elmo so I figured it would be a winner. He was smiling and happy until….Andrea Bocelli started singing. At which point someone was killing a puppy with their bare hands on the screen. I mean, by the looks of his reaction that’s what you would think! Adam and I laughed our butts off until we finally realized why he got so upset. Listen to the lyrics: “Time to say goodnight.” Isaac thought he had to go to bed. Poor thing. Ha!