Hi everyone,
Colin has had a rough few weeks. He transitioned to a new room in preschool, with older kids, while the center is doing renovations. So not only is he in a new class, in a new room, his class (2 year olds) is sharing the room with the 3 year old class. While he was always a little pouty when we dropped him off, that has escalated to full-on tantrums, starting with a marked change in demeanor every morning when my husband and I start getting dressed for work, getting worse when we start trying to get him dressed (he'll fight us while we try to wrestle his clothes/shoes on), and ending up with crying and clinging to us when we get to the school.
On top of that, he's had a bit of a cold that's caused him to cough at night, which would wake him up.
For the past several months (6 or more? Maybe?) we've had a morning routine where Colin would first wake up around 5am and we'd bring him to bed with us, and he'd sleep for another hour or two. It was really sweet to wake up to him happily chatting in the bed with us, or for him to wake us up with a kiss on the cheek.
But with all the above stressors going on, he started waking up earlier and earlier and asking to come to bed with us. When he used to wake at night, which was rarely, we would just have to go in and give him a hug or sit with him for a minute and he'd go back to sleep - now, when one of us goes in, he's standing at the edge of the crib crying "lie down in mommy-daddy's bed!" and if I try to sit and rock with him to calm him down, he gets more upset and squirms until I put him down, then runs to the bedroom door and starts crying about coming to bed with us.
At first it was the cough waking him up, and I think he wanted comfort. But he isn't coughing anymore. Plus, now he's started not going back to sleep when we bring him to bed with us. He lays there and chats and squirms fusses and basically ensures that no one is sleeping
This morning he woke in his crib at 3:30am, we brought him back to the bed, and he just never went back to sleep until around 6am when my husband got up with him and the two of them fell asleep on the couch watching morning cartoons.
How do I get him back into his own bed without stressing him out too much? I feel bad throwing this on him when he has so much else going on, but I haven't gotten more than 5-6 hours of broken sleep in the past week and I'm exhausted.
