Bedmate

Sometime last Dec, we decided Marcus is big enough to sleep in a big boy's bed, so E converted his cot into such and it took no effort to convince him to climb into his "new" bed. He has always been very fond of his own bed and even refused to sleep on our bed whenever we invited him to, on nights when we suddenly felt all lonely and missed having a little warm body to cuddle. I know it is a bad and unfair practice to invite him on some nights, risking him wanting to be sleeping with us. Luckily, he usually declined our invites. Most times anyway.

The morning after his first night on his big boy's bed, our helper told us how she had to carry Marcus back to his bed twice in the night as she found him sleeping outside our bedroom door. E immediately told him he could always just open the door and come in, instead of sleeping outside if he misses us. Mistake. Ever since, he would come into our bed in the middle of the night and sleep between E and me. Every night. Like every adorable toddler, he carries his Pig with him without fail as he ventures out of his bed into ours and soundly falls asleep diagonally across so that within minutes one of us would get kicks. We don't have the heart to talk him out of it and don't think it would have worked anyway. So we have come to accept this habit as a middle of the night exercise for E - to get out of bed, lift up the 15kg boy and carry him back to his bed. Sometimes twice. And daddy does it ungrudgingly.