Shhhhh, Sam's sleeping

I've mentioned numerous times how we've had trouble with Sam going to bed at night. We've tried all sorts of things to get him to keep his lights turned off, stay in bed and go to sleep. Anyway, most recently, Sam has decided that he likes to sleep with his door wide open. We gladly obliged, hoping this might do the trick to keep him in bed. Counter-intuitive, right? But we're willing to try anything. So we go through his bedtime routine and then when we're all done we leave and leave his door wide open. He used to get up shortly after that and turn on the hallway light, preferring to sleep with the hallway light on. We'd turn it off, but somehow it would end up turned on again before the morning. Jason rigged the light switches so he can no longer turn on the hallway light as he was waking frequently during the night to turn it on (like at 3AM) and I think the extra light was throwing off his sleep cycles.

Anyway, we leave his door wide open now and usually he stays in bed pretty well. He sometimes gets up once when his music shuts off (after 30 minutes) and asks to have it turned on again, but other than that he's been pretty good. The benefit of leaving his door wide open is that when Jason and I go to bed, we can sneak a peek at how he fell asleep and look at the little guy sleeping. He's so peaceful and cute and it's just not often that we get to see him asleep anymore, he's not like an infant who sleeps anywhere, anytime. Often times I wish I could take a picture of him, but fear the flash would wake him. I'll try to describe some of my favorite sleeping positions that we've seen him in and you'll have to use your imagination to fill in the rest.

One night Jason and I peeked in on him to find him lying face up, but his face and chest were covered completely by the open Cars, Trucks and Things that Go book which is a rather large book. He had apparently fallen asleep while reading and didn't bother to put the book down. Last night he again was reading that book when he fell asleep, but this time he was lying on his side and the open book was over his upper body like a blanket. BaaBaa was just barely holding onto the mattress with the blanket attached to him, otherwise the rest of BaaBaa's body was teetering over the edge. Another night Sam was lying face down. And I mean face down. I could not see his face, it was buried in the mattress. His head was in the upper corner of his mattress, his body was at an angle and his feet and shins were dangling over the side of the bed. It reminded me of the Wicked Witch's feet sticking out from under Dorothy's house in the beginning of the Wizard of Oz, except that Sam's feet were facing down. That time I put my hand on his back to make sure he was breathing as I just couldn't see how it was possible with his feet buried in his mattress. Other times, Sam is lying tranquilly on his side or back, clutching BaaBaa's feet and legs. It's a joy to get to see him and Jason and I have made it part of our bedtime routines to peek at him before we go to bed. We come into our room stifling giggles (or laughs...Jason doesn't giggle) or saying, "Awwwww, did you see Sam? He's so cute!" or things like that. We'll have to peek in on Matthew more often too as I'm sure it would be just as fun.