Great Wolf Lodge

As a final hurrah before summer ended and the kids went back to school we drove up Rt 2 to lovely Fitchburg to check out the new Great Wolf Lodge. The kids were beyond excited, and while spending a gorgeous late summer afternoon at an indoor water park and arcade makes me break out in hives, I think their excitement was contagious.

We walked in and were immediately handed complimentary wolf ears and a lei. I remembered someone on Tripadvisor commenting how excited they were that the wolf ears were free. I guess I was too, because there's no way I'm paying for red, white and blue wolf ears. But the kids loved it.

Our room wasn't ready so off we went to the locker rooms to change and check out the water park! Can you sense my excitement? No, it was fun. Cam was able to go on almost all the slides, and there was a great slide that we could all go down together as a family.

The kids loved the Wolf Den in our room, and the food at dinner wasn't horrible. It was crowded, and you feel stuck there because there really isn't much to do around the area. The casino um, I mean arcade is open all night and is basically training for Vegas for when these little ones turn 21.

After checkout we emerged outdoors and I took a great gulp of fresh air. It was glorious after breathing chlorine for 24 hours. The kids had a blast, and I'm glad we went, though as you can probably surmise we won't be rushing back there anytime soon.

Success!

Well, for now.... but I'm taking it! Cam slept through the night last night. Finally. I realize it's just one night, but it's felt so good to know that maybe we're on the right path. The first words out of his mouth were, "Did I wake you up?" So it's clearly on his mind too.

It was an enormous adjustment to our usual schedule to put him to bed at 8:30 instead of 7 or 7:30. When in the world will I get to watch TV with my husband? But it's worth it if it means we can get Cam to sleep well throughout the night.

Our visit to the sleep clinic

Like most parents, we are sleep deprived. However, I had thought once our kids got a little bigger, oh, like 5 and 7, we could count on a good chunk of uninterrupted sleep. Well, I was so very wrong. Every night Cam wakes up at 12:30 and 2:30, like clockwork. Sometimes he will go back if I just rub his back or scratch his hair. But other times that doesn't cut it, and there's a lot of screaming and crying and not a lot of sleep. We had finally had enough and I called the Children's Hospital Sleep Clinic, home of the famous Dr. Ferber, at the recommendation of his pediatrician. I was dreading the ride into Longwood at rush hour, but I was so excited to finally have a professional weigh in on our increasingly ridiculous situation. We met with a nurse practitioner, who was great, with both me and Cam. She gave me a concrete plan to work on and spoke with Cam about what he needed to do to as well. While I'm not psyched to take on some her recommendations, I would basically do anything right now for all of us to sleep through the night at this point. So, starting tonight we are:

-Putting Cam to bed a full hour later than usual. Typically he goes to bed around 7-7:30. But now we need to keep him up until 8:30, so that he is very sleepy and can easily fall asleep on his own. Jen, the NP, thinks he probably needs 10 hours of sleep and we were putting him down too early, causing a lot of bedtime drama. Eesh. I've been known to put my kids down at 6:30 and lie about the time. I really enjoy our evenings alone, this is going to be a tough one. But it's all in the name of sleep.

-If Cam asks me or Tim to come in, we just stand at his door to check on him. We don't go in to rub his back, give him a bad dream shot, or a head massage (you see how ridiculous things have become?) This is also going to be a tough one. I anticipate a lot of crying and whining.

-Wake him at 6:30am if he's not up. What? Wake him up? Blasphemy.

We return to the sleep clinic in a month to report on his progress. Fingers crossed!