2 1/2 years later, he finally uses a pillow and blanket - by his own choice!

Luke has finally embraced sleeping with a pillow and blanket! I'm not completly certain why, but Luke has taken his sweet time adjusting to using a pillow. I've had one in his bed since a bit after we switched his crib to a toddler bed. He's never wanted to use it. The last few night though, he has -on his own- begun using his pillow!

Now the blanket thing has been an ongoing battle. He has hated being covered up for quite some time. The only thing I can trace it back to is once, when we had first moved to Germany, he got wrapped up in one of his little blankets while he was sleeping and woke up terrified. Since then, he has refused to be covered up. This has proven a challenge in keeping him warm at night. In Germany we'd double up his jammies so he'd stay toasty warm. When it started to get cool this winter, I very slowly tried to reintroduce the blanket (any attempts before this would result in a huge flip-out on Luke's part.)

So, each night I would go in after he had fallen asleep and cover him up. This seemed to work well as long as he didn't wake up and catch me covering him up.

A few months ago, I let him pick out his own blanket from the store (a very wise suggestion from a very wise friend!) and I started asking him if he'd like to be covered up. He would say "yes" or "no" and I would comply with his answer. If it was no, I would put the blanket at the end of the bed and then I'd go cover him up after he fell asleep.

Just in the last week, however, he has started covering himself up!! YYEEESSS!!! Now I don't have to worry about him being cold in the middle of the night anymore! He finally likes to be covered - and he's happy to do the covering himself! I know it may seem silly to be this excited about such a small feat - but in my world, this is HUGE!