Sleepovers

We love to play board games with friends. Now that we have kids it's a bit harder to get together with other couples to play board games late into the evening. For the most part we've had good luck getting Ike to sleep in a playpen in other people's homes. Now that he sleeps in a regular bed and is fully capable of climbing out of a playpen we weren't so sure he'd be such a good sleeper in strange places.

Two weeks ago we went to hang out with our most frequent board game friends. When we arrived at their house their older two kids were pretty much down for the night. We made a few suggestions for what to do with Ike like having him sleep in a room by himself and putting a child lock inside that room, but ultimately we decided to put him down on the floor with our friends' kids. But there was one caveat. The dad of the other family would be the one to put him down.

It worked like a charm. Jon (our friend) told him to lie down and told him that all the kids were going to sleep and he needed to go to sleep too. He had his monkey and his blanket, and he needed to be quiet, close his eyes, and go to sleep like the big kids. No yelling. No getting up.

I suspected it would work because he sleeps on the floor at his sitter's house, and she's only had to send him back to his napping spot once. He's very obedient for people who are not his parents.

We went to play games with another set of friends this past Saturday. This time Ike slept on the floor in a guest room, and again the dad in the family told him to go to sleep and stay on his sleeping spot. He did end up waking up before we were ready to go, but it wasn't a matter of disobedience at that point. He was just disoriented and scared, so I held him while we finished our game. Once that game was over we headed out.

On the way home from our friends' that evening Eric and I discussed how good our little boy is for other people. We're working on a plan to have other people put him to bed every night. Any takers?