My eldest Daughter Bella is almost three and a half and she’s always been really good at going to bed at night. She would stay in her bed and entertain herself until she fell asleep and in the mornings she would stay in her room and play nicely until I went in and got her. All of a sudden she’s turned into a top negotiator and her sole purpose in life is to find as many excuses as possible to avoid bedtime.
This morning has been particularly torturous. She burst into my room at 5am, declaring that her eye was hurting. Bella has suffered with Styes since she was tiny and recently they have really flared up and sometimes her eyes get stuck together. On this occasion her eye was fine, She’s just a clever sausage and knows what to say to get me to jump out of bed.
She was back in my room again at 5:30am because she had to show me something scary in her room (again pulling at the heart strings), she said she could hear a “waa waa waa” noise. I assured her that there was no scary noise but all of a sudden a Crow made the loudest noise, making us both jump. It took another 5 minutes reassuring her that the Crow wasn’t a Dragon, trying to break into her room because he wanted to eat her for Breakfast.
At 6am I had another wake up call from Bella who “just wanted to let me know that she fancied a chat”. When escorting her back to her room reminding her that her Groclock was not Yellow, for what seemed like the 50th time, I also discovered that Flo’s bedroom door was wide open. Bella had decided to rope Flo into the early morning torture.
Flo was sat up looking a bit dazed and confused, so I stuffed her dummy back into her mouth, laid her back down and said a silent prayer to the Sleep Fairy and thankfully she went back to sleep. Bella had the cheek to come into our room one last time at 6:30am, but she took one look at my unimpressed, overly exhausted, demonic expression and turned quickly on her hills and swiftly back to her bed-wise child.
The fun and games have begun at bedtime too and she has now been coming up with all sorts of excuses in an attempt to stall. Her favourite is declaring that she needs a wee or poo. If Daddy is doing bedtime, she’ll con him with affection and keep asking for kisses (sucker) or demand that he kisses all of her teddies before he even thinks of vacating her bedroom.
I have started to use a strike system with Bella and if she gets three strikes, I take something that she loves away. The one that hits home the most is her bedtime stories, that normally makes her rethink her actions. This morning however she obviously wanted to live on the edge no matter the consequences. Can someone please send me coffee and a Twix?!
