One step forward, five steps back

So the part about potty training success? Yeah, not so much. So Monday, Andy went to school in underwear (under his clothes, not just his underpants, thanks Jennifer). He came home in them, having been dry all day and getting lots of praise from his teachers. Tuesday, he again went in underpants and came home in a different outfit wearing a diaper. Then yesterday, he refused to wear his underwear, exclaiming, "Only girls wear underwear. I'm not a girl!" No, I can't explain it either. He steadfastly refused to use the toilet all day. Nice. Today he did let me put underwear on him so fingers crossed that it works out.

Meanwhile, the baby is sleeping somewhat predictably (knock wood), waking up once between midnight and 9 a.m. The late bedtime is not ideal and I'm working on it, but she has proven she can often go four or five, sometimes six, hours without waking. Andy, however, keeps getting up in the night.

I've been trying to move his bedtime earlier to avoid some of the customary meltdowns that come with him trying to drop his afternoon nap. Yesterday, he was somewhat ornery and I've taken a new stand that when he acts up by whining or crying, I'm going to send him to his room until he calms down. About six, he was giving me grief about dinner, shouting that, "It's NOT dinner time! NO! I don't WANT dinner." So I sent him to his room and laid him in bed. I came back a little while later and he was asleep. I kept thinking it was a catnap, but when I checked in on him about 7, he said he was tired and wanted to go to bed. He then slept like an angel. Until 3:30 a.m. I retucked him and went to bed. At 4:30, she woke up so I got up, fed her and put her back to bed. In the meantime, Andy woke up bright eyed, happy and hungry. Bjorn got up and gave him some dinner/breakfast and Andy refused to go back to bed. Bjorn kindly let me sleep until about 7 when we traded off again.

It's weird. The sleep thing with Andy as a baby was a pain, but we muddled through it and he eventually started being a good sleeper. When we had Meg, I figured we had him more or less solved so we could focus on her. It somehow didn't occur to me that we'd be up and down all night with him, too. I can only imagine folks with big families of five or more kids NEVER get any sleep.