DJ and his car bed - Day 2

Last night was the first night I put DJ to bed in his "new" car bed.  If you haven't seen this thing, it is a toddler bed in the shape of a VW bug.  He LOVES it. He just won't stay in it.  Nor will he stay in his room since he can turn door knobs (this is officially confirmed).

Eleanor kindly let us borrow some door knob covers to keep DJ from being able to turn the knob and opening a door.  Thinking I was slick, I put one on the inside knob of his room's door, figuring that if he can't get out of his room, eventually he'll figure out that he just needs to go to bed.  Within 2 minutes of shutting his door, he was busily trying to figure out how to open his door.  No more than 5 minutes later, I heard his door open.  Not surprised, I got up from the couch and went to his room to find the door knob cover in pieces on the floor.  He didn't figure out how to work the cover; he just pulled on it until it came apart and therefore off of the knob. 

So I stayed in his room with him for 20 minutes, reminding him (about every 30 seconds) that it was time for bed/sleep.  I also tried to tell him that if it's dark in his room and he's in his car bed, then he needs to stay in his car bed.  When I left his room and shut the door again, he was no where close to asleep, but I also had zero expectations that anything I said would stick.  But our boy never ceases to amaze us.  He didn't try coming out of his room again.  In fact, we found that he'd fallen asleep in his bed on his own, covers mostly on (I had to fix that).

Clearly, we have a number of long nights of putting him to bed ahead of us until he learns the habit of staying in bed and falling asleep on his own in his car bed.  In addition, we probably need to spend more time getting him to wind down at night so that he realizes that he's tired sooner.  In other words, his bedtime routine just got a whole lot longer. 

It also means that we have to be in bed earlier, too, because 6AM comes VERY quickly!  Like clockwork, DJ was awake and talking at 6AM, and came in to get Daddy at 6:20AM (as I was already in the shower).  No more sleeping in on weekends for awhile!