Sleep woes

Early this morning Nikko came into our room at 3:50a. I hauled him into bed between us, but he seemed to keep thrashing and not resettle into sleep. At 4:40a he sat up and started wailing. I brought him down again and decided that perhaps he couldn't fall back asleep in our bed. I walked him back to his room and put him in bed. Then I put a pillow on the floor, took a short blanket and lay there, reassuring Nikko that I was there. He peeked over the side of his bed two or three times to see if I was still there. Mercifully, I fell asleep and woke up at 6a. Nikko had finally fallen back asleep as well, so I trudged back to my bed until Ronin walked in at 7:30a. If this happens again tonight, I will probably bring extra blankets for me to lay on so I don't kill my back. Nikko had fallen asleep in the later part of the day, and that may have killed our chances for an intruder-free sleep. I think I'll keep him up as much as possible tomorrow so he will be tired by bedtime and hopefully sleep all the way through til 7a. Hopefully.

Today we went to a 3-year old's birthday party. The kids did pretty well, but they were the only other kids besides the birthday girl and her sister. Ronin got into the toys, Audrey showed lots of curiosity, and Nikko entertained himself with a hungry hippo game. He had looked up at a shelf that had a lot of board games and started trying to pull me over to it. I picked him up and he reached out for hungry hippo. I wondered if they had that at preschool, and we were allowed to open it. I didn't let the kids use the balls since they were really small, but it wasn't a big deal for them at all. When the birthday girl opened presents, Nikko got attached to a Go Fish game in a purple box with handle. I also wondered if this game was at school, so eventually we had to swap it from him so he wouldn't bash our heads in disapproval for not opening it for him. After the party we did a quick grocery run. Ronin and Audrey were sleeping in the car with Denis while I took Nikko inside the store with me. He enjoyed looking around and didn't clamor to get out of the cart until the very end. He later fell asleep on the short ride home, then continued his nap on the couch. I am now leery of letting Nikko sleep during the day, especially later in the day, because he won't fall asleep quickly at bedtime. If he does sleep, I try to limit his nap to only an hour. Two hours means he's not going to bed easily. One hour can be dicey, too. At bedtime Nikko tried to escape once along with Ronin, and that made me upset. There was a long silence, and then Nikko was crying. I gave him a minute, then went in to put him back into bed. Ronin had given up on jailbreak attempts and was sleeping. I tucked Nikko in and thought that perhaps he just wanted some reassurance that I was nearby. I sang the Goodnight Song to him a few times, excluding words at the end of stanzas so that he could fill in the gap. I think this participation might have helped soothe him, because I was able to leave the room and he didn't try to get out again. It feels like we're Ferberizing (sleep training) Nikko again. I don't know what happened to cause him to want to keep coming out of his room during a middle of the night waking, and go into our bed. It makes it harder for us to fall back asleep, especially if he's kickng us in the head. But I also think he might be needing more TLC or attention right now. I wonder if he senses that things are about to change for him starting Monday.