Waking up After Falling Asleep with the Toddler

It's been 12 days (13, actually, as it is past midnight) since I've last posted. I just haven't found, or rather made, the time to do it. Blogging is not the only thing I haven't done as much of lately.

Part of the reason is that most of my personal Internet use is late at night when the boys are asleep, but my wife and I are breaking our 3 1/2-year-old son in to sleeping in his own bed - what we call his "big boy bed" as we attempt to entice him into sleeping in it regularly. The name is meant to distinguish the crib from a toddler bed.

When we first took him out of his crib and put his younger brother in it (who turned two today, or rather yesterday...happy birthday Hen-Hen!), we had to lie by him until he fell asleep. That got old, so we had him sleep with us in our bed for a year or so. Now it's time to finally get him in the "big boy bed," but so far it's only working when we again lie by him until he is out. This typically means I too fall asleep, and thus, no late night TV, Internet use, etc. Tonight I woke up and decided to touch base with the rest of the world online before slipping off to bed for good.

There is a bit of controversy surrounding whether you should let your toddler sleep with you and for how long. I personally find nothing wrong with doing it for several years until the child lets you know they are ready for there own bed, but that doesn't mean I want to be doing that. Hopefully, it won't be long before he is ready to lie in his own bed and fall asleep without one of us by his side.

By "several years," I don't mean until the child is 16...or anything near that.