Last night as I’m kneeling on my son’s floor waiting for his stuffy sniffling to transition to the stuffy mouth-breathing of sleep, I found myself pondering the number of times I’ve found myself in such a position – apparently enough to know that neither sitting nor lying down would have left me in a comfortable state when I left. These moments are much fewer than they’d been in the past; at times my wife and I practically took turns sleeping on his floor. Now it is once a month on average at most.
Grasshopper’s sleeping woes have typically been just what one would expect from a toddler: afraid to be alone, afraid of the dark, afraid of the sound of the washing machine on the other side of the wall. In the past few months he had resorted often to sleeping on his floor claiming he was scared of his bed. His bed, mind you, is a happy, plastic fire engine, so I wasn’t really clear of what there was to be afraid. But it was easier to setup a couple of comforters on the floor as a mattress than to delve into the motivations of a 3 year-old, so we accommodated him and went about our activities.
For the past few weeks it had escalated to the point that his mattress sat on the floor for him to sleep on and I was close to sliding his fire engine bed out to the back yard as play furniture. But as I contemplated this plan, I realized that I should really address the root problem rather than work around it (after all he was running out of floor space). So I put his bed back together and we attempted a return to relative normalcy. Of course, that very night as I attempt to settle the troops, he starts to get anxious and claims that he is scared. So I ask what it is that he is afraid of. As it turns out, he is afraid of a shadow that his night light makes on the wall as a result of a hump on the side of the bed along the wall. So I grabbed something firm and rectangular, wedged it alongside the mattress to block the dip where the hump shadow was visible and – voila! – problem solved. Unfortunately the object I grabbed was a picture frame which I didn’t realize actually had glass in it, so yesterday there was a clean-up issue. But now the frame has been replaced with a blanket and a pillow and all is generally leveling out nicely … until allergies kick in. It is always something.
Seeing the bedtime drama I still experience with Cricket, I know that the end is not yet in sight. But it is at least getting easier to diffuse. And soon I may never have to sleep anywhere but my bed … unless my wife has something to say about it.