Little Boy Blues

Little boy blue, come blow your horn
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn
Where is the boy who looks after the sheep?
"Under the haystack fast asleep"
Will you wake him? "Oh no, not I
For if I do he will surely cry"

It is my belief that the person who came up with the phrase "fast asleep" must not have had a child up until that point. Or at least that is from my own experience (I growl at all you with perfect sleepers, you know who you are :) It is now past 10:30pm and Aedan is still awake. Oh, we've tried putting him down but he won't sleep until he is good and ready.

Aedan 1 month asleep on Neal. I like the times when Aedan's face is all relaxed when he sleeps because his cheeks are at peak plumpness . They still do this when he sleeps.

When he was a newborn, I remember thinking to myself, "I sure expected babies to sleep longer." From day 1 Aedan has not been a snooze champ - in fact, the first night in the hospital, the only way we could get him to sleep was if we put him snuggled right next to us in bed. He is a big time snuggler and while I appreciate the many hugs and cuddles, I do wish he would be able to do without while he is sleeping. I suppose I should take advantage of the snuggle time while it lasts...

Aedan 8 months old, asleep on our bed when no other place would do.

At 15 months we switched him to a toddler bed because he just plain hated the crib. He likes his bed ok but he likes his freedom even more. I love that he can just get out of bed himself when he is done sleeping but I hate that he can just get out of bed himself when he thinks he is done sleeping.

Aedan 20 months, asleep in his toddler bed with his toy helicopter.

All said and done he prefers our bed and he prefers sleeping with us. It is quite the challenge really because he will sneak in and climb into our bed and plop himself down in between us and fall asleep without a peep and we won't realize it until the morning. We need to gate him off more is what we need to do. Or something.

Aedan 18 months with a cute pucker-hand-on-cheek sleep. Pic taken in Florida.

Crying to sleep is not an option with his gag reflex and drugging him is not the road we want to travel (although someone recommended giving Benadryl before a flight to get him sleepy and whoa, that had the opposite effect - he has never been so wired). I am slightly comforted by the fact that some of his cousins have sleep issues although I am not comforted by the fact that their issues lingered until about age 3. I suppose I'm not really looking for suggestions but rather just giving you the ok to think, "ya, they definitely aren't perfect."

Aedan 19 months not really asleep with Neal. Pic taken in Utah.

Well, I paused in the middle of this post and put him down finally. FYI this is not normal for him to be up until 11pm however we would be lucky to get him down before 9pm. And he will be up 7 or 7:30am. Most times he will have an 1.5 hour nap in the day however he is starting to think he doesn't need naps too. Some may attribute this to bad parenting however nothing in the books I've read to help with sleep issues seem to fit his mold - we will see what the future holds for our little night owl.

And before I finish this I remembered one funny little video clip we have. I'd say this ranks up there with his falling asleep with a sucker in his mouth. Well, this clip (Aedan 16 months) just shows that sometimes our plans to extend the awake hours backfire on us.