So I clearly should not have said something.

Around 1:30 AM, the Monster woke up and started talking to himself, despite the melatonin.  By 1:45, it was clear that we had to leave the hotel room, or he’d end up waking up R, and ensuring that his mother would be up all night.  So, as happens when we go on vacation, I decided to take him out in the car and pray that he’d go to sleep eventually.

Yeah… ‘eventually’ was about 6 AM.

No, I didn’t get any sleep.  On the other hand, I now know where a good number of 24-hour business are located in Bensalem, Pennsylvania.

I don’t think, per se, that something went wrong aside from the fact that he didn’t drink his juice before bed (laced, admittedly, with benadryl to help him sleep as well), and even that I don’t think was a major factor.  No, I think the issue is that, the way his sleep cycle works, he just wakes up in the middle of the night.

As I figure it, he probably wakes up most nights.  Under most circumstances, this isn’t a big deal – he’s alone in his room, where he has some isolation and can either settle down and go back to sleep, or have a bit of run-time to wear himself down before sleeping again.  However, when he’s on vacation, he’s usually in a bedroom with other people, and is being urged to go to sleep if he wakes up in the middle of the night, which probably serves no good purpose.  (For the record, I also believe that not telling him to quiet down and go back to sleep will also be ineffective.)

So the problem has to shift from the idea of how to get him to sleep in a hotel (getting him to sleep is easy) and figuring out arrangements to ensure that he can sleep without disturbing others.  It’s why I personally don’t like staying at friends’ houses – not because I don’t want to impose on others’ hospitality, but because I’m more concerned about the Monster awakening the entire household and potentially ending said friendships.

Because as it is, this kills doing anything on the second day of a trip, since we’re all so exhausted from the night before.  Granted, this trip wasn’t so bad – we were just up in Philadelphia at Sesame Place (and I’ll discuss that tomorrow) – but it’s one of several reasons we’ve not yet planned on going to Disney…