It’s a while since I posted about moving the boys to toddler beds, so I thought I’d update you on the progress. If you’ve seen some of my recent posts (Top five special things about multiples and I’ve got the bedime blues) you’ll see that although my boys love their beds, we’ve had a few problems.
When we put them to bed at night they run around like crazy people, chucking their toys at each other, hurling themselves over the back of the headboards onto the beds and generally causing mayhem. Some nights all of their toys end up on the landing or scattered down the stairs. After the story T1 usually takes all of their cuddly toys and stacks them on top of T2’s head until he starts to scream. Then, at some point through the evening, T1 ends up in T2’s bed. But all of this is good fun, and within half an hour or so it’s silent and we can go and enjoy our large glass of wine.
The thing that isn’t so great is their wake up time has changed. When we first put them into beds they started to wake earlier than usual, but they’d stay in their room playing together for a while before screaming for me. Since the clocks changed we’ve had a few issues. After showing the boys Never Ending Story (big mistake – they found it very scary!), T2 started waking in the night because he said he was scared. Thankfully, after installing a nightlight he got over it and started sleeping through again. Obviously that was too good to be true, so shortly after he starting waking ridiculously early around 6 – 6.30am. This was hard work as I need my sleep and can’t function if I get less than eight hours. T1 also started waking at the same time, and they’d both stand at the stair gate screaming until I came to get them.
Their wake ups got earlier and earlier until they started to co-incide with Husband getting up for work. His alarm goes off at 4.50am and although it’s super quiet (I have no idea how he hears it because I don’t) and he creeps around the house like a burglar, using his mobile phone instead of lights, they’d hear him and jump up screaming until somebody came to get them. In the past controlled crying has been my saviour – I hated doing it but it solved a terrible sleep phase that T1 went through. Unfortunately this time as they’re both awake it hasn’t worked.
Over Christmas we stayed with my parents for ten days and we managed to encourage them to go back to bed when they woke up, and even managed to keep them sleeping til 6am which was real progress, but I worried that once we came home they’d slip back into their old routine.
Thankfully they haven’t been quite as bad – their wake ups have been around 5.45/6am but that is still stupidly early.
They got a GroClock for Christmas and I’ve been using it for the last two nights. I’m keeping everything crossed that this does the trick and helps them stay in bed until 7am as that would be bliss. If it doesn’t then I’m putting them pair of them on eBay with a 99p starting bid. “Buy one, get one free: Twin boys for sale, one careful owner”.
Either way, keep an eye on this space and I’ll let you know how the GroClock performs over the next couple of weeks. I have very high hopes that it will save me from plummeting back into exhaustion.
