One step back

Barak is asleep. In a diaper.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time you will know that Barak is one of the most constitutionally sleep-resistent children ever born. He came that way and has not changed. Sleep is the enemy. It is the devil. It must be fought at all costs.

To be fair, this trait is clearly genetic. MHH hates going to sleep and often falls asleep on the couch over a book, moments after refusing to go to bed on the grounds that he wants to do one more pasuk or isn't tired or whatever. His classic position is slumped on the couch, book on chest, two dirty socks on floor next to bare feet. When his father came to visit last Rosh Hashanah, I found both of them sitting next to each other on the couch, both asleep, both with books on their chests, with two pairs of dirty socks on the floor next to two sets of bare feet. When Barak goes to bed, he takes a book into his crib, and if I am sitting in there with him I see him nod off over a copy of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" or "Olivia." The only reason he doesn't have the dirty socks there is that I take them off before I put him to bed. It's only a matter of time.

Until we came back from Israel, though, he'd been doing pretty well. We had a good bedtime routine, and most nights he went to sleep with a minimum of crying. It took about an hour, maybe, to get him to sleep. When we came back from Israel, though, it was all over--routine disrupted, sleep but a distant memory. And I was pregnant, and then I got put on bedrest, and then I had Iyyar, and... anyway, as of two weeks ago we were at the point where bedtime frequently involved up to three hours of screaming. Seriously. And he woke up during the night a bunch of times, too. Have I mentioned that Iyyar's tummy troubles now have him officially in the "colicky baby" category? Three hours of screaming at least three days a week?

And then Barak figured out that he could cry potty, thereby turning bedtime into an extended bedtime story cum potty trip that only ended when he--get this--actually did anything on the toilet. How much of a disincentive is that?

And the one naptime where, after several false alarms, I actually ignored "Imma! Potty!"--oh, do I even need to say what happened?

So, last Shabbos we had my DSIL and company here. They arrived at 10 pm on Thursday and Barak was--you guessed it--on the potty, reading "Cars and Trucks and Things that Go," so tired that he actually fell off ("Imma! Potty fall!") but then insisted on getting back on ("Potty! Pish potty!") And my DSIL, wise woman with twice as many kids as I have, delicately suggested that perhaps a diaper was in order. So the next morning, I asked Barak if he wanted to wear a diaper. He did, and I put one on him, and put the rugs back where they were.

This is not to say that he does not still make potty trips. He does--the lure of ice cream and chocolate chips is still enough of an incentive. And I do think he'll get there eventually. But right now, my desire to have us all sleep trumps my desire to have him out of diapers. Handily.