Thursday, April 23, 2009

2 steps forward, 2 steps back

Why must parenting be so hard??

Eric made some excellent strides in potty training today. No accidents, and he actually went to the bathroom as opposed to just holding it in all day and then going when he finally gets a diaper on at nap/bedtime. AND he went on the potty at home which is a flipping miracle. Life is good, right?

Sadly, we are going to have to go back to having the boys in separate rooms for a while. Despite the '21 days to form a habit' theory, no good habit is being formed and it's been waaaay more than 21 days. The only way to get Evan and Eric to go to sleep in the same room at a decent hour without injury is for Ethan or I to sit in the room until they both fall asleep. And we have better ways to spend ~10 hours a week. So unless someone has a brilliant plan, Eric will go back to the 'baby' room tomorrow night, which is sad and pitiful because we already put the toddler bed away and essentially he'll be sleeping on a tiny little crib mattress while there's a nice big-boy bed in the next room over. But the boys need their sleep and us parents need our sanity.

And can I express my disappointment in the internet and its lack of help in the room-sharing crisis? I know Eric is the 'spirited' child, but I can't be the first person to put a feisty 3 yo in a bedroom with his 5 yo brother, can I? But if you google things like "sharing room" all you get is people putting an infant and a toddler together, or people wondering if it's wrong to have a boy and a girl share a room. Internet, how can you let me down in my time of crisis??

2 comments:

  1. Maybe sleeping on the sad matress all alone will shame him into wanting to behave at bedtime. Or, when Eric moves back in with Evan, maybe get one of those folding screens to put in between the beds, literally as a divider.

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  2. I'm hoping the separation might encourage them to behave better...and the thought of bed tents has crossed my mind, but I don't know if that will be more of a problem than a solution :-)

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