The Adventures of Moving Sayer

Things are moving sooo sooo slowly with our housing situation. Hopefully we'll know today when we can finally sign papers and be ready to move in to our new home. Last week, I threw a tiny fit and declared, "That's it! We're paying more and more every day we stay in this apartment and that's less and less we'll be able to put into fixing up the house when (and if we ever) get into it!" So this last weekend, we packed up our belongings, stuffed our furniture in the shop at Futures, and are now camping out in my parents' basement. One room is completely filled, floor-to-ceiling, with boxes and boxes of stuff. We occupy the other room and Sayer has been confined to his pack-and-play.

Now, for those of you who know Sayer, you may have some small idea of just how much he likes his routine. He likes his crib, he likes going to bed at the same time every night, he likes having his binky and his John Deere blankie to sleep with, and he HATES HATES HATES not only sleeping in his pack-and-play, but sleeping ANYWHERE but home. So, for the past five nights, I've had the lovely task of holding down my cute little screaming toddler until he finally gives in and goes to sleep and I can move him to his own bed. I've been bitten, kicked, smacked, scratched, and anything else he can do to get away from me and somehow escape the "evils" of his temporary home. I'm pretty sure if he knew any cuss words he'd have exhausted them by now; I think some of the babbles are meant as a substitute! :)

I have yet to figure out the trick to make this process easier. The first night, we spent almost an hour laying on the bed with him to no avail. We finally shut off all lights and noise, and we laid him between us and sang Primary songs to him. This worked (after about seven or eight songs...thanks SO much to Laura V.O. for pounding them into our heads over the past year or so, we actually remembered the words!) and we got to sleep about 10:30. The next night, he was on to us. The minute I opened my mouth to sing him a song (I thought I was sooo tricky and started as soon as we had him in bed) he started screaming louder. I'll try not to take this as a personal slam to my lack of musical ability.

Sunday we had our first experience with our new ward. It certainly didn't help that this weekend was Daylight Savings and we lost an additional government-regulated hour of sleep on top of all the Sayer-regulated hours of sleep we'd all ready lost! We were all sleep-deprived and grouchy at this point (okay, mostly me) and as we got there a few minutes late, we took a seat in the back of the chapel right by the door. We've always had a hard time getting Sayer to sit through sacrament meeting (imagine that), and we discovered it was worse when he could so easily see his escape route. We took turns chasing him through the halls, holding him down (this was worse...he screamed so loud I think the whole congregation turned to see what we were doing), and trying to coax him back to the chapel with treats. Hello Blackfoot 9th! I was so not in the mood to deal with it, and I wasn't sure how he'd handle the new nursery, so I told Jake to just take us home. I knew Sayer was tired and I figured if Jake went back for Elder's Quorum and my parents were at church, there wouldn't be so many distractions and I could get him to lay down and take a nap.

NOPE! I laid him down in his "crib" and shut the door, then proceeded to listen to him scream for about half an hour before I finally gave in and let him out. I tried rocking him for a few minutes, but that wasn't working either. He ended up falling asleep about six that night for a little nap, when Jake and I stuck him in the truck to go run errands. I don't much remember how we got him to sleep that night, only that it was once again late and took a long time.

Monday night, Jake wasn't home and I was delegated this pleasant task to do on my own. I tried everything: singing, distracting him with a cartoon, rocking him. Nothing was working. An hour had passed. He started pointing at my cell phone, and out of desperation and being pretty close to tears myself, I shut it off and gave it to him. He literally looked at it for about two seconds, pressed some buttons and realized it was off, threw it back to me, laid down, and went to sleep. Just like that. What made it worse was that Jake got home about that time, looked at him sleeping, and said, "Huh. That was easy. He goes to sleep better without me here." RIGHT!!! Needless to say, I didn't talk to him much that night.

So last night, we started about 9:00. His usual bedtime is around 8:00 or 8:30, so we figured starting later would make him more tired and more willing to just zonk out. Miracle of ALL miracles, I tried the cell phone trick after about twenty minutes, and it worked the exact same way!!! I'm not sure if cell phones have magical powers or if he was just so exhausted by this point that he couldn't torture us any longer. Anyways, tonight is another adventure waiting. Will the cell phone trick live up to its success??? Stay tuned...