Static and silence

Evan's been having some trouble for the past few days. His excellent sleeping record has been tarnished. Instead of getting tucked into bed and falling asleep with little argument, he's been resisting bedtime, getting up over and over, and often not falling asleep until one of us gets in bed with him. It's been frustrating for us--we don't know why he's acting this way, and we thought we had "solved" all of our little sleep issues.

On top of that, his screaming is getting worse--louder and longer and more frequent. He seems to do it when he feels he's not getting enough attention, when he's really excited, or when he's doesn't like the way you've done something. Put those three together, and he's pretty much screaming ALL THE TIME. The kicker is that he knows he's not supposed to do it. After he does it now, he immediately corrects himself by putting his finger to his lips to "shhh" or telling himself to "chill". Now what am I supposed to do with that? He knows he shouldn't do it, he tells himself not to, but he just can't seem to help it. It's just maddening, especially when we're out in public or around people we don't see very often. Try explaining this behavior to anyone, and you just feel like a complete and total ass.

So that's what we're dealing with here this week. The screaming, overtired, almost four year old who still wears Pull-Ups and tells himself to chill.