The Nightly Ritual

So, a typical evening in the life of Lautje involves trying to convince him that he should go to sleep. Sometimes, with the proper persuasion, he does so rather easily. Other nights, irrespective of what we do, he is wide awake. After 30 minutes of trying to coax him to sleep, we give up and take a break, putting him in his crib, hoping he gets the idea. This first stage can be seen in the top photo: resignation at his plight as he stares through the crib bars like a man imprisoned.
The second stage generally involves Lautje attempting a prison break. He grabs hold of the top rung and begins to pull himself up as much as possible. Luckily for us, he's still a substantial distance from being able to manage the trick (though the day is coming sooner than we would like...). At the end, he has to settle for simply hanging on to the top rung and looking at us pitifully, in the hopes that we'll rescue him, as can be seen in the second photo.

The third, and final stage, is somewhat less endearing than the first two. After being ignored by his horrible parents, left to suffer alone and uncared for, his patience finally snaps and he lets us know in no uncertain terms that our little parental vacation is hereby over and that we must liberate him immediately, uniting him with his toys on the living room floor (or better yet, carry him around until he feels that we've sufficiently atoned for our sins). As you can see in the final photo, this stage involves just a wee bit of noise...