Sleepy boy

Robert is a fairly typical 5-year-old boy. He's loud, rambunctious and almost never just walks. Everywhere he goes is at full speed.

But he does one thing better than either of his sisters: He sleeps.

Elizabeth couldn't sleep in her own bed through the night on a consistent basis until she was about 8 years old. And she was getting coddled to sleep until about a year ago. And Colleen, well, shoot, she's not quite 3 yet, so it's hard to expect too much of her. She sleeps alright and it isn't hard to get her to sleep, but she requires the most attention.

So lately, Cate's been working at 6 on Thursday, 3 on Saturday and 1 on Sunday. That's a three-nights-in-four stretch where it's just me putting all three to bed. Robert gets the brunt of it. And he's been the star.

The girls share a room. Typically, Elizabeth reads on her own and I read Colleen and Robert a book in the girls' room so I can get Colleen to bed more easily. And when reading time is over, Robert goes to his room, gets under the covers and goes to sleep.

That's it. Sometimes I can come in and tuck him in without losing containment on Colleen, but not all of the time. And he's a big boy -- he gets it done all by himself.

Not that Robert stays in bed all night, but he's pretty easy to deal with. Sometimes he gets up in the middle of the night and plays night watchman -- he'll walk around the upstairs and check in on everyone, make sure they're OK.

One night recently, during his rounds, he came into our room and checked both sides of the bed (I wasn't asleep yet), then came back to my side. I asked him how his rounds were going and he said, "I'm cold, and my blanket is cold!" So I invited him to bring him and his blanket in to my side of the bed to get warmed up.

You can't do that with Colleen and you couldn't have done that with Elizabeth at that age, because it would've been tears when you sent her back to bed. But after about three minutes I told Robert it was time to go back to his room.

And he did.

Because he's our best sleeper.