Matthew after dark

While Sam is asleep within in minutes of hitting the pillow (usually with the book he was looking at covering his face), Matthew takes a bit of time to get to sleep. He generally doesn't take an official nap anymore, but he often does fall asleep for a few minutes watching cartoons before dinner. This leaves his with a burst of extra energy at bedtime which he uses up in imaginative ways.

For example, last night Jason and I went to bed around 10. We had heard Matthew moving around from bedtime (around 7:30) until 8:30 or so and didn't think too much of it because we always hear Matthew moving around after bedtime. We usually don't interfere as long as he's not loud and bothering the other kids. Anyway, when we got up to our room Jason saw a pile of clothes hangers on the floor in the middle of our closet. It was quite funny, until I saw where the hangers came from. A good pile of my clothes were lying on the floor underneath one of the hanging racks in the closet. Hmmm. Matthew. He had to help put the clothes back on the hangers in the morning.

This is just one of his many after dark antics. In the past he has emptied his clothes drawers. And no, he doesn't just pile his clothes up on the floor, he lays them all out completely flat, so they cover his entire floor. Then he walks around from item to item.

Another favorite of his is to lay his books out on his floor. And no, he doesn't just lay them haphazardly, they are organized in "roads" and at the end of each road is a group of books which he claims are his "houses". His cars and trains are covering the roads. It's really quite a lot of fun for Jason and I to see what he has come up with each evening before we go to bed.

A few nights ago, he made a fort in his room. He took some blankets and draped them over the chair in his room and when we went to bed that night, we saw that he was sleeping on the floor in his fort. Another time he had moved his pillow and blanket on the floor right next to his bed and fell asleep there.

Of course he still performs the "Mommy? I have to tell you something" trick on a regular basis (like 3 times an evening) and he also is coming up with some more imaginative tricks to get our attention. Last night it was "Mommy, my knee hurts". He had come downstairs to tell me about his knee and as he was telling me, he started shaking his knee. He has pulled the "sore knee" trick before so I knew it likely wasn't serious. I told him that sleeping and resting would probably make it better, but he insisted that it wouldn't. So I then asked him what would make it better and he said, "A cough drop." Ok. I got him a cough drop hoping that it would appease him and he would stay in bed. But a few minutes later, he came down and said that the cough drop didn't help him. Fortunately, Jason came in from working on the garage at that time and took Matthew upstairs and "looked" at his knee, which apparently fixed it better than a cough drop.

Matthew usually falls asleep around 9 or so (when he doesn't nap at all during the day it's closer to 8), but you never know what you'll get between bedtime and sleeping. The kid is full of surprises.