Keeping Billy clothed at night has been an ongoing battle. Within 30 seconds of us closing his bedroom door at night, he can be completely undressed, pull-ups off and singing merrily about the whole experience. We have gone through this cycle for hours at a time at night, and then restarted it at about 2 a.m. if he happens to wake up to use the bathroom.
The first step was giving up on two-piece pajamas and going with zip-up footie pajamas, which came increasingly difficult to find as he got bigger. But we've found, with the help of family and friends who are always on the lookout, size 5 and 6 footies. (Billy is 3, but tall for his age.)

Obviously, once he's totally potty-trained -- and we're making significant progress on that front -- this will be less of an issue, but for the time being, we had to find a solution. We were laundering complete sets of bed sheets and blankets as much as a couple of times a day.

The zip-up jammies worked fine to start, because he didn't have the fine motor skills to operate the zipper. Well, that didn't take long. On the off chance that you're currently eating your breakfast or lunch, I won't describe what we encountered the first day we found out he could operate a zipper. The horror ... the horror.

So then we moved to a diaper pin skillfully inserted through the zipper pull at the top and pinned to his jammies. Within three days, he could unfasten the diaper pin. Even more remarkable, one day we came back in and found him out of him pajamas, naked, with the PJs stretched out on the bed next to him, pin still fastened at the top. I guess little Houdini shimmied out through the neck opening!

Thanks to the great advice of my fellow bloggers at Both Hands and a Flashlight, we tried putting a shirt -- one size too small -- on over his jammies, which were still pinned at the top, underneath the shirt. Success for almost a week!

Then Billy learned to reach under the shirt, unfasten the pin without looking, unzip his jammies (while still wearing the shirt), step out of the feet and remove his pullups. He would run around the room, trailing the jammie feet behind him like a half-dressed Superman. And I was starting to think he actually did have super powers. It also occurred to me that perhaps we should notify the school that we could check off "fine motor skills" on his IEP and consider that goal "achieved."

After redressing him three times last night, I had a thought: turn the pajamas around backwards, zipper going up the back. But then, I thought, the feet wouldn't work. So I cut the feet out. I also cut a little notch in the neck so the neckline wouldn't be uncomfortable for him.

So I redressed him, pajamas on backwards, zipping up his back, pinned at the top with a diaper pin. Small shirt went over his head. And he laid down and went straight to sleep. And slept through the night!

I'll keep you posted, but if he gets out of this set-up, we're taking him on the road.