He's such boy (and a sleepy one to boot)

Charlie has always been the Sleep Champ of the house. Sleeping through the night at a few weeks old, king of the cry-it-out method, still often sleeps 15-16 hours a day, can sleep anytime, anywhere without disruption yet doesn't mind getting kept up a few hours past bedtime.

We are now paying for this luxury.

While at Oma's recently, Charlie discovered how to climb out of the Pack-N-Play (a.k.a. playpen). Instead of going to sleep effortlessly and alone at 8 p.m. it took a team of Experts to hours of trying every other sleep-inducing method known to mankind before, exhausted, resorting to the old strap-him-into-the-car-seat-and-drive-around standby. And again for nap the next day. And bedtime the next night. Rinse, repeat.

Since returning, we've been trying to get Charlie to sleep in a bed every now and then, so that if it is ever necessary, it isn't a completely foreign concept.

It is going okay. He clearly prefers the bed initially. But being a baby, he has a rather short attention span. So within minutes, he is up and wandering around his room in the dark until someone over four feet tall intervenes and puts him in his barred baby prison cell.

Today at nap, he successfully slept in the bed for about two hours before getting up. It was about half the length of his standard nap, though. So he came to the living room couch to join his sisters in their viewing of 'Dixie's Costume Movie' (a.k.a. The Wizard of Oz).

Dowlan lays him on the couch, his tiny bald fuzzy kissin' head propped on a pillow, covered in a purple chenille blanket. He's restless and stirring, so he hops up, grabs a ball, goes back to the couch and lies still, clutching the ball in one tiny grubby toddler paw. His person is incomplete without a sphere.

***

Later, after I got done watching Dowlan clean up dinner, I went into the living room. Charlie had four sections of train track and was almost done putting them together. (I was amazed that he could do it--it takes a fairly dextrous set of fingers.) When the track was together, he put the train on it and in the cutest little voice said Choo! Choo! I grabbed him more track and he has laid it all over the living room and is still, thirty minutes later, walking around saying Chug-a. Chug-a.