When he first started staying over (bear in mind he's only stayed over at ours a few times at weekends when his mum wants to go out as we cant have him overnight at ours during the week nights if she wants to go out due to the time DP has to go to work in the mornings and not really being practical / nice for DSS to wake up without Daddy being there and I know the ex would not like it if I took him to nursery or for her to have to come over to collect him as DP wouldn't be here and she and I dont have any contact. Which is why when she wants to go out on a week day evening DP has to go over to hers to babysit him) he was sleeping in our bed while we slept on the sofa bed.
He had slept at ours during naptime in the day before, either in our bed or on the sofa, so sleeping in Daddy's bed wasn't unfamiliar. The last time he stayed we had bought a tent for him and his mum let us have his old mattress and he slept on that in his tent in the living room. (Our house is all on one level so the living room is just a few feet away from the bedroom - so he knows where we are and can come to us if he needs to.) He has his own bedtime things (which get brought over from mum's) - so his bedding, nightlight, teddy etc. He also has plenty of things that are his over here, slippers, pjs, all kinds of toys.
We have him every Weds afternoon - DP picks him up from nursery, come back home for lunch, then playing for the afternoon and we usually give him dinner and then back to his mum's for 5:30pm. We have him every Saturday - pick up at 9:30am - he has lunch here then it's back home by 4:30pm. We try to do different things so that he's not just playing in the house each time he comes, we go to the park, or go and see my sister who has two DDs, or go to a soft play place. Sometimes we swap days so that she can take him to a birthday party or so that we can take him to a family thing on DP's side.
I think the problem with crying for mummy at night is more when he is not well. He will wake himself up from coughing, or if he has a blocked nose etc and then will get all upset (probably down to the usual feelings of feeling yucky being ill and over tired) and then of course wants mummy. Like you all say, he is still very little and of course wants his mummy when he's unwell. We do try and ride out the storm when he is being very upset, but I guess we just wondered what methods of coping other people have when he is especially worked up when he's ill as it's quite distressing sometimes to see him so upset. We dont let him see how distressed we are though, we just give him lots of cuddles and do whatever we can.
I think the thing about DP going over to hers to babysit, DP has to go over there regularly anyway to pick up DSS and drop him off, to come over and fix things in the house and comes and helps out if she is unwell and needs a hand. I know he doesn't really like being over there sitting in his old living room till midnight, but he does it for his son. I know he also does it to try and keep the ex happy as she can get pretty crappy with him if he says he cant babysit. We only live five mins walk from her house, compared with a 60 mile round trip for her parents (who look after DSS every Tues & Thurs afternoon and babysit every Thurs night).
DP pays his ex just under 50% of his salary (which is crazy I know) as they had a high mortgage together and although to begin with when she told him how much he needed to pay her she said it wasn't for the mortgage it was all for DSS, however now that he has asked her where his money goes (in the hope he could request that at least some of it could pay for a babysitter or perhaps bring his payments down a bit) she told him it went towards the mortgage working out with only about £25 a month for DSS. He pays just under half of our monthly outgoings (which thankfully are not as high as hers!) but once that is paid and his own outgoings are paid he is usually left with nothing for himself and cant save up anything. It is pretty rough seeing him feeling so down about money, checking his account each time he wants to buy something for himself like a book, to see if he can afford to. I recently lost my job, but before I was earning more than him and she said that I should pay for everything (unsure whether she meant I had to subsidise him so she still got her money every month)
I'm hopeful that at some point his payments can come down and that he can get a better paying job (he's due to be made redundant in Dec) otherwise we'll be struggling over this for a long time.
I was up all night thinking about it all, feeling like a bit of a tyrant for having taken stickers off a chart. DP was upset last night as yesterday was his first mothers day without his mum (she died last year) so it was a bit of an emotional night last night with us both being a bit teary.
I was thinking about how I was raised - my parents did smack me, and although it was pretty rare that I did get smacked, I did know what was acceptable and what wasn't. Not that I am saying in any way that smacking is the right way to discipline as I would never smack (although my sister does and that is a whole other thread.... grr!) I was saying to DP last night that it's tough to know what to do, one camp says naughty step, one camp says it's unfair to children to deprive them of things/attention, one camp says remove stickers, one says its wrong to negate the positive behaviour that got them the sticker in the first place. DSS is DP's first child, so it's as much of a learning curve for him as it is for me being the SM having no kids of my own.
I know three is a difficult age, and we're just trying to find some good methods to use to help make it a little less difficult.