Jameson is starting to understand games, in a limited sense. His game of choice is Hide and Seek, and most of the time he likes to be the seeker, shouting “I find me!” when he finds mommy or daddy. He frequently looks in the spot the hider just hid in previously, but he is starting to follow sounds when we yell “ready!” to know what room we are in.

The best part of the game is when we tell him to close his eyes, and he scrunches up his entire face.

When he hides, he doesn’t always pick the most difficult locations. He likes to see where you are looking for him and isn’t always a quiet hider 🙂

Yesterday, his teacher told us that she counted the children after gym and discover one missing. A little girl told her that he was hiding! Jameson had hid himself in a closet, and was apparently standing pole straight and unmoving. He is really starting to understand the hiding concept, which is pretty funny. He gets so excited when he finds someone or is found, shouting “More hide!”

A few other phrases this month: “I’m back!”, “I pet” (for Sasha), “Chase you” which sounds like tissue. He is even starting to say his name occasionally, sounding like Jamie (or chicken… so maybe we haven’t had a lot of success there yet).

We have a couple baby names picked out and have had him try to say both. He can say both better than his own name, so that is good, ha!

Sometime between 2 years and 25 months, he successfully started jumping! It just took a few months.

We are still having quite a bit of sleep issues, and have decided to try a gate at his room so we can leave the door open without worrying that he will exit his room, since yelling at him to get back in his room is just prolonging the issue. Poor thing still occasionally falls asleep on the floor. Luckily, he still stays asleep and doesn’t get up in the middle of the night, so we are thankful for that.

He started transitioning to the Viking room at daycare yesterday, and we are all sad that Ms Cara will not be able to join him this time. In fact, Nathan isn’t transitioning yet either. Luckily, his teachers say he knows Logan and Alessa who already transitioned to the new room. He is at a stage where he doesn’t want to come home and wants to keep playing at school, so I am less concerned about this transition than previous ones. He is a confident, rambunctious toddler.

After about a month of successful bedtime in Jameson’s new big boy room, we interrupted our regular sleeping schedules with holiday travel and parties.

He couldn’t sleep in the car, and was going to sleep on a few nights as late as 10 and 10:30, wired and overtired. Bedtimes were filled with crying and rocking and crying. Jameson would only put up with the rocking after leaving his room once or twice so he realized that was his only option, and even then, he only successfully fell asleep on me once.

At the beginning of January even after routine was settled again, he began screaming himself to sleep. We felt terrible to hear him screaming like that, but all attempts at quieting him had failed. We tried bribing him with more stories if he’d just stay in bed; we let him do his usual stalling tactics and took him to go potty; I brought out a new small kids mp3 player he got for Christmas on a very low volume and promised him he could use it if only he would STAY IN BED.

Instead, he would get out bed and scream at the door until he eventually passed out. At some point, he would decide to go back and get his blanket and teddy bear and lay out the blanket like it was a pillow on the floor. He was determined!

He fell asleep up against the door on a few nights, and Brian would reach in (after banging Jameson’s head, he was so close!) and move him with his pajamas so we could open the door enough to properly get to him and carry him to bed.

I don’t mind yelling and crying, but the screaming was really getting to us. We brought over Aunt Melissa and he screamed for her; the only person he didn’t scream for and stayed in bed for was grandma! But we couldn’t have grandma over every night.

We tried her tactics: extra books, extra love, lots of extra time and being held, extra songs. It allowed me to successfully get him into the bed, but at a cost of bedtime taking twice as long, and he would still get out of bed when we left.

I finally went to the Internet and immediately felt better: I read a lot of stories of parents whose children were screaming themselves hoarse, or worse, vomiting in distress! Jameson seemed more manageable after that.

I came across an article that talked about toddlers feeling trapped in their cribs. Obviously, Jameson is no longer in a crib, but I wondered if he might feel trapped in his room when I closed the door. I was willing to try anything. That night I changed the game on him and told him I’d leave the door open if he was a good boy and stayed in bed.

It worked, but only that once. Since then, he still refuses to get in bed when we leave. We no longer try to force him in bed, read extra stories, or otherwise try and accommodate to him. Thankfully, leaving the door open has stopped the screaming, but we still get the crying occasionally.

We leave it to him to choose when to climb into bed, and after about another week, he doesn’t sleep on the floor much anymore and uses his bed when he gets tired. There are always exceptions (like last night, he tried to fall asleep in the doorway late, testing his boundaries again), but bedtime is smooth again.

Bath on bath night, 3 or 4 stories, a song and prayers when mom puts him to bed, and a kiss goodnight as he stands by his chair. I tell him the door can stay open if he’s a good boy, and he requests it stay open and repeats good boy after me. I’m assuming at some point we’ll need to modify the method as he continues to test us, but all I care about right now is that he’s not screaming.

The best nights are the ones when I linger upstairs doing laundry or cleaning up and he can watch or hear me pass back and forth, so I know it was right to leave the door open so he can feel more secure.

Toddler life!