Operation: Give Him the Boot!

Growing up, like all little boys, I had a fascination with magic.  I even taught myself a few card tricks.  Apparently, this is an interest that Eli and I share.  Because we’re convinced that Eli is well on his way to a career in magic.  We’ve never seen anyone get out of something as fast as he can.  In fact, he can pull off his Dobbs Brace within 15 seconds when he really wants to.  No pair of handcuffs would hold this kid.

Of course this makes bedtime a challenge.  We can’t simply let Eli fall asleep on his own or “cry it out” as some people suggest.  Because when he’s awake, he’s working on taking his Dobbs Brace off.  For the first 5 months of his life a well-timed bottle was all he needed to fall asleep.  Now that he’s hit his 6-month “birthday,” the bottle has lost it’s power.  It’s as if Superman suddenly wasn’t affected by kryptonite.

This makes for many long nights as we try to get him down.

Sometimes though, it looks like Eli’s gone to sleep when he’s really been playing possum.  (A favorite game of his.)  When we check back on him later, we see something like this (although at this point we had managed to get his right shoe back on, his right foot never moved):

Eli comfortably sleeping: Perhaps this is why he doesn't like to wear his brace

So last night we implemented Operation: Give Him the Boot!

It was a risky move.  But we decided that instead of spending the next 4 hours fighting with him to go back asleep we’d let him fall asleep and then put on both his sock and his brace.

I can’t stress enough how difficult it was.  Easily on par with landing a man on the moon.  He’s a light sleeper.  Who hates wearing his braces anyway.  After multiple attempts and about 20 minutes of effort, we managed to successfully put on his sock, un-velcro his shoes, and then get the shoes back on.

We plan to enter an international Jenga competition later this month.