Running on Empty

So last night was a very rough night, which led to a rough morning. Adair gave us about 4 hours of solid sleep before he began waking up and screaming nonstop. And we went to bed at our normal time, around 10. The kids were down around 8:30. I knew it would be rough when it took us almost an hour to get him to stop screaming.

We do the same bedtime routine nightly: story, prayer, song, water, hug, kiss. We make sure the nightlight is on (he will freak out, screaming "Stars!" until it goes on). It was working for us until about a week and a half ago. He now will demand hugs and/or kisses for close to 10 minutes if we let him. I literally have to tell James when to step away and start making Adair go to bed. It kills us and wears us out, especially since Adair will only allow James to put him down, comfort him, anything at night. So I'm no help at all for the bedtime routine, unless James isn't home. Then I can get him down fairly easily.

Like I said, 4 hours of good sleep. We eventually put Mady in bed with us, James put earplugs in, and we let Adair scream himself out. We can't figure out why he screams. Anytime he wakes up, morning, night, naps, whenever, he will scream until we physically take him out of bed. James is running on fumes and pure exhaustion today.

This morning, there were tantrums nonstop from the time he woke up. Part of them came from him wanting the TV on (his mom would allow him to watch TV every morning for the 4 months she had him while she got ready for work), and the other part, well, we don't know what caused them. He woke up at 6:20, and by 7 a.m. was already in time-out.

We child-proofed our house the other night. I got tired of having to lock our bedroom door once he was up just to get dressed (plus, the kids seem to love destroying our bedroom), so we now have doorknob covers on every door in the house. If a door is closed and he is up for the day, and one of us happens to be behind that closed door, we end up with an epic meltdown, complete with him practically beating down the door.

We have the first evaluation March 26, but I am hoping that we can figure something out that doesn't make this bedtime routine last for an hour or more, and that we can get a few more nights of sleep before then. Full nights. I think I can count the full nights of sleep on one hand in the almost month we have had him back.