The Power Has Shifted

So Charlie figured out how to get out of his crib last week and we've been trying to regain some power ever since.  It started last week when he was a little off around bedtime...I'm not sure if it was because he was getting his two-year molars or we're starting some of the toddler personality changes or what.  Anyway, he woke up one night around 11:30 and I began the painstaking process of rocking with him and trying to get him to go back to sleep.  After an hour and a half I finally gave up decided that he needed to have some time alone to try to get back to sleep.  I walked into our bedroom and told BJ that we might have to listen to Charlie cry for a little bit. 

It turns out that he yelled more than cried - yelled for me, then for BJ and even Copper at one point.  He was very mad and wanted everyone in the neighborhood to know it.  About three minutes passed when the screaming suddenly stopped.  For a split second, I thought "wow, I'm glad he settled himself down so quickly."  The next thing I heard was the pitter patter of little feet running towards our bedroom.  The ridiculous thing is that my first reaction was absolute fear for my own life.  There is something about the sound of someone running toward me in the pitch-black house in the middle of the night that scared the daylights out of me.  BJ and I both sat straight up in bed and gasped, "he got out."  You would have thought that we were dealing with a monkey.

Charlie was all wound up and the rest of the night was a disaster.  I had high hopes that the initial crib-jumping incident was a fluke but the next night Charlie jumped out of his crib within five minutes, opened his bedroom door and marched out to the couch with his blankie in hand and gave us a few dirty looks.  It's been a rough couple of days but Charlie finally realizes that he can't leave his room when it is bedtime and he went to bed tonight without any problems.  He's still waking up once a night and is a little disoriented, but I figure that we'll deal with the middle of the night craziness in the next couple of days.

BJ went to Wartburg this past weekend with some friends so my sister and her 3 girls came to keep us company.  As always, Charlie loved the extra attention.

 I loved that Claire (complete with a post-bath head wrap) wanted to read Charlie a story when he was having his bedtime snack.

Finally, we had a family photo session this past Friday and it went so poorly that the photographer refused to charge us.  There were about 30 mph wind so Charlie's eyes were all watery and our hair was all sorts of crazy.  To make matters worse, we took Copper since the session was outdoors and Copper found some fecal matter to roll in as the photographer was trying to snap some pictures.  BJ would describe the entire afternoon as a debacle.  I'm hoping that we can be creative with the few pictures that the photographer was able to take.