John likes to play with light switches. I hold him and he turns them on and off (as I say "on"..."off"...etc.). He likes to help turn his light off before nap and bedtime and on in the mornings. He soon learned that he could reach the switch at the bottom of the stairs on his own - if he stood on the bottom step...which lead to realizing he could reach it even easier by standing on the second-to-bottom step (which often resulted in him reaching too far and landing at the bottom of the stairs). So I put a stool in our bedroom by the wall so he could do the light switch while I got ready in the mornings (remind me again why he has toys...?) That has been enough to distract him from trying the step technique again - so far. It didn't take him long after this to realize that if he reached far enough, he could turn on and off his bedroom light while standing in his crib. This didn't bother us too much because in the mornings he usually just plays and 'talks' to his stuffed dogs in his crib or pushes his 'prayer bear' and listens to the prayer - now he had 'turning on and off the lights' to add to his busy morning wake-up routine. Silly boy!
Yesterday, I put him down for his nap and I heard his light go on (the switch makes a WHAP noise when he flips it) but he still laid down and went to sleep...silly boy. I peeked in at him a few minutes later to put a blanket on him and turned off his light. That night, I read him some books and rocked him a bit before putting him to bed. He got comfortable in bed and fell asleep right away - no crying. A while later we hear WHAP and John fussing. We look on our baby video monitor (a must have - it's SO handy) and can tell that his light is on (stinker!) so Will offers to go turn it off and put John to bed again. No biggie, he's asleep in a few minutes. Then, much later, I'm off in dreamland and I could swear I hear WHAP, so I groggily turn on the monitor (which sits on my bedside table) and sure enough, there is John playing in his crib with the lights on - at 3:30 AM! STINKER!!! I went up and opened the door - John is just sitting there happy as can be to be playing in the middle of the night. So I pull the crib over a couple inches, turn off the light, and put him back to bed. It's so hard to be mad at 3:30 AM when he does something that's so darn funny! Nevertheless, I don't want a repeat of it tonight. I know he tried to reach for the light this morning and at naptime - hopefully he's figured out he can't reach it now and will stop trying. If he keeps trying, eventually he'll grow enough to reach it again...I'll keep you posted.
1 comment:
I laughed at reading this because I can remember James doing that too. We learned and never put Audrey's crib that close to the switch. Smart little buggers they are.
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