Opening Doors

So, for a while now Aiden has been able to reach the doorknob. He always grasped it on tiptoes and painstakingly, slowly turned it and still couldn't open the door. Sean would carefully show him how to turn and push the knob to open the door. I know, I know: why on earth would you ever show a two year old how to open a door? Why not just hand him a book of matches or the kitchen knives? I LIKE that Aiden can't leave a room that I've specifically put him in. That way I know where he is and what he's doing.

Anyway, he finally got the hang of it and would shut his own bedroom door at night, before slowly opening it again to give me and kiss and shutting it again so he and daddy could read stories together while I escaped to the shower. He never, ever opened his bedroom door on his own though.
We would hear him over the baby moniter at eight am, and he'd peacefully play in bed until Sean and I strolled in at eight thirty or nine if it was a Saturday. At nap time, despite protestations, he'd stay in his room and sleep for two, three or more hours every afternoon. At night, he'd stay in his room like a little angel, never leaving despite knowing how to.

It was heaven. I figured I'd be able to handle twenty children give or take a few if they all behaved like this. And then one day, the week before we moved, I found Aiden standing bleary eyed in our bedroom when he should've been napping. My big mistake here was having sympathy for him: he just looked so sleepy and lost that I said something like "ohhh! It's okay little guy, you can stay with me instead of going back to bed".

During the move his sleep schedule was jostled around and tossed right out the window eventually. When we got here he went back to his old schedule for a couple of days and then the napping stopped. And then one morning at seven a.m. a twenty eight pound cannon ball landed squarely between Sean and I. This was totally unacceptable and Sean and I yelled "AIDEN!" in the way that Alvin the chipmunk is always getting yelled at. He finally realized that he could open his door by himself and voila, leave the room.

He was suddenly getting up earlier and earlier until it was barely 6 and he'd be coming into our room. He was losing sleep and it was having a pretty bad effect on his behavior. We were at the end of our rope, since nothing we did seemed to keep him in his room anymore until one night he got out of bed and we put him back in, as usual, and he finally said "okay mommy...goodnight", and stayed put. He's started sleeping in until 7:30ish and actually takes naps again. I guess he just needed a little more time to get bored with his new skill and get more comfortable with the apartment. Whatever it was, he's back to being a little angel again.