Oh how I miss my almost 4 year old who would sleep through the night, wake up in the morning and go downstairs and watch tv for a little while so I could get a few more minutes of sleep. He has disappeared. Not Dylan, but part of his independent self. He still picks out his clothes in the morning and gets dressed all by himself. But for the past two weeks he's woken up at least 2 times a night (usually 3 times) walked into our room and needed someone to walk him back to his room and lay with him until he falls back asleep. Then he will sleep for an hour or so and wonder back into our room, rinse and repeat. I'm not sleeping all that well anyway and to be woken up multiple times a night is seriously wearing me (and Dave) out.
How did this all start you might ask. Dylan has never liked loud noises, he doesn't like the air dryers in bathrooms, they really freak him out. But nothing bothers him as much as the alarm on our house going off. Occasionally we will turn the alarm on during the day and forget it's on, open a door and boom, you are deaf for the next 10 minutes while your ears recover. Couple that with the smoke detector going off on the same day and Dylan is now convinced that whenever we are in the house the alarm will go off. He used to stay downstairs if I had to go upstairs to put clothes away, not anymore, he's right there with me (or Dave) going upstairs. I can't even get a minute to pee by myself.
However, when we are outside it's a different story. We were at the farmers market last Saturday and I was waiting to pay for my tomatoes and zephyr zucchini (and it took forever, OMG, the lady in front of me had brought her own basket and the person ringing her up had to subtract the weight of the basket, which the lady had written on the basket and endure the ladies story of "don't take the tomatoes out, they bruise" UGH, kill me now) and Dylan just took off. He didn't run, but he just started walking away, I figured he would start to come back, but he was almost out of my sight in the crowd and pretty far away before I caught up to him. I'm pretty liberal when it comes to keeping an eye on him. He doesn't need to be next to me every second, but him getting almost a block away at a busy farmers market did not make me happy. When we got home though, a totally different story, I walked onto the laundry room (which is off the kitchen) and he's right there wondering where I went.
This is driving me crazy! I know he is genuinely worried about the alarm going off again and the loud noise, but we have tried everything we can do to reassure him that the loud noise (hopefully) will not go off again and he will be ok. But it is taking him forever to get to bed now and all the waking up at night isn't good for anyone.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get back Mr. Independent?!
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