In Which My Daughter Tries to Kill Me By Refusing to Sleep Through the Night

In case you thought perhaps Pippi's bedtime was all moonlight and unicorns, with little back-scratching fairies who carried her off to sleep, here's your reality check.


Pippi was generally a better sleeper than her brother was as a baby -- although truthfully that’s a pretty low bar. But where Junius tried to kill us quickly through insanely intense sleep deprivation during his first year, his sister has taken the slow-torture approach and is trying to bring about my demise in a more methodical, diabolical fashion.

She continues -- even at age five-and-three-quarters -- to wake up during the night (sometimes more than once) and require attention. Sometimes she calls from her bed, with a sing-song "Moooooooooooooo-mmyyyyyyyyyyyyyy." Then there’s a 15-second pause, followed by the same pitch of Moooooooooooooo-mmyyyyyyyyyyyyyy," (almost never "Daaaaaaaaa-ddyyyyyyyy") which continues steadily until I go into her room. Other times she appears at the edge of the bed, as if by magic, her round face and hot breath an inch from mine -- which still scares the crap out of me when I realize she’s there. Frequently she wakes up around 5:00, which gives her plenty of time to go back to sleep while robbing me of my last 30 minutes before I have to get up for boot camp.

I am basically rude and not at all sympathetic to her when this happens. But I walk her back to her bed, tuck her in and tell her I love her -- because I just. want. to go. back. to sleep.

It seemed we had finally bribed parented our way out of this deadly pattern a couple of months ago. But she has resumed her nocturnal neediness over the past week. Why? I have no idea.

Well, actually, I have a few…

27 Reasons That May or May Not Explain Why My Daughter Wakes Up During the Night

1. She is lonely.
2. She needs to pee.
3. She needs to pee and wants to use my bathroom instead of hers.
4. She needed to pee and just wanted to tell me that she already went. All by herself.
5. She peed and now she wants someone to tuck her in.
6. She wants someone to lie down with her.
7. She wants someone to lie down with her who is a human and not one of her “friends” that is a stuffed animal.
8. Her bed is too crowded.
9. She just wants some company.
10. She wants to know if it’s time to get up.
11. She wants to know how much longer until morning.
12. Her legs itch.
13. He back itches.
14. She can’t find Shirley (the Sheep, pictured above).
15. She wants to know if she has school tomorrow.
16. Or the next day?
17. She just remembered a funny story about what happened at school yesterday and needs to tell me about it right now.
18. She had a bad dream.
19. She had a silly dream. And needs to tell me about it right now.
20. She wonders how many days it is until her birthday and how many friends she can invite to her party and can it please be a sleep-over?
21. Her room is too dark.
22. Her nightlight is too bright.
23. There were these really awesome Hello Kitty socks in the dollar bin at Target and she wants to know if we could go buy them in the morning.
24. Her closet doors are open.
25. She thought her brother was up.
26. She wants to know if she can play Minecraft on Daddy’s iPad.
27. She needs a tissue. And she may or may not have a nosebleed.

If you've got any favorite reasons from your own house, feel free to add them below in the comments. If you've got those kids who magically slept through the night as a six-week-old baby and never looked back, then you should just keep that to yourself.

Late Night Adventures in Parenting

"Mommy? There is gooey on my finger."

That sentence is not something I really want to hear at any time of day. But especially not coming from my child at 4 a.m.

So I grab my glasses from the nightstand and fumble my way into the bathroom to find Pippi standing beside the toilet. She's holding her finger up in the air, her pull-up and pajama pants around her ankles.

I grab a tissue, wipe her hand and reach to pull up her pants. And that's when I realize what was on her finger.

Poop.

Somehow, even though she's been waking up dry for weeks, tonight she has slept through pooping in her pull-up and didn't realize it. That is, until she stuck her finger in it.

Ick ick ick.

And yet, somehow she's so sweet about it and appreciative of my help and just happy to have some quality time together in the middle of the night that I can't get mad at her. I wipe her bottom, scrub our hands, find a clean pull-up, get her pajamas back on and carry her to her bed.

As I'm tucking her in, she says, "I love you, Mommy. You are the Best Mommy Ever." Then she smacks my hand with one of her noisy little kisses and grins at me over the edge of her blanket.

Melty hearted, I drag back into my bed, fluff my pillow and settle back in toward sleep.

Except that Pippi isn't done yet. And that's the roller coaster of motherhood. One minute I'm all weak-kneed in love with the girl. The next minute she's wailing for me from the other room and I'm wondering why she hates me so much.

An hour later, we were finally both asleep.

One more hour and we're starting another day. One more crazy ride.

Photo: Self-portrait by Pippi has nothing to do with the story except that I thought it was funny.
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Soporific Stairs

In case Pippi's last staircase nap wasn't funny enough for you...

This is what happens when you wake up at 6 a.m., play hard all morning, walk at the grocery store instead of riding in the cart, spend mid-day paddling around in the big pool and then resist taking a nap.

We can only guess that she sat down at the top of the stairs to slide down on her bottom, then leaned back and fell asleep.

Truth is, I was just jealous.

For more sudden-onset napping genius (plus a spot-on analysis of "The Roly Poly Pudding"), be sure to visit Naps Happen.
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One, Two, Three Strikes You're Asleep...

Today was a perfect day in Raleigh for a baseball game -- sunny skies, but not too hot. A lovely Sunday afternoon for sitting outside, lounging in a stadium seat and eating a hot dog.

It was also a great afternoon for an outdoor nap. So Pippi, in her infinite three-year-old wisdom, decided to combine the two activities:

This beautifully plump face is what you get when you take a toddler who only got eight hours of sleep last night and no nap today with a belly full of hot dogs and Skittles, some warm sunshine and a good snuggle in her mama's lap. Even the cheering Wolfpack fans couldn't wake her after she crashed just before the seventh-inning stretch.

On a related note, if you're looking for a fun family outing, I highly recommend an NC State baseball game. For those few faithful readers out there, you may remember our disaster at the Mudcats game. Thankfully, the Wolfpack games have been just perfect for us -- close to home, reasonable crowds, quick concessions, friendly staff and a great stadium.

We may be back again next weekend -- let's just hope Pippi can stay awake long enough to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

Note: I'm not trying to overtake Naps Happen and her fabulous blog -- and this was no top-of-the-stairs nap today -- but it was just too cute not to capture.
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Can Quiet Time Actually Include Some Quiet?

Over the past couple weeks, Pippi has graduated from an afternoon nap to quiet time.

And by "graduated," I mean "broke mommy's heart and destroyed any chance to get an hour alone." And by "quiet time," I mean "45 minutes of Pippi trying not to stay in her room and definitely not being quiet."

But it was getting impossible to put her to bed before 9 p.m. and that just created another big mess. So we decided to bite the bullet and let her give up the nap in exchange for a 7 p.m. bedtime.

Most days, she's spent her quiet time hopping in and out of her room, running to the potty, asking for help getting various costumes on and generally demanding lots of attention. It was basically 45 minutes of work for me and no rest time for her.

Then I tried putting the baby gate at her door to keep her contained. Several minutes later, when she appeared downstairs at my elbow, I asked her how she got out.

With a stern face and loud voice she announced, "I stomp on that gate!" Well, so much for that plan.

So today, she was actually staying in her room, playing and singing and entertaining herself for a good 30 minutes. I was so impressed and hoping for just 15 minutes more when she started calling for me from the top of the stairs. After attempting to negotiate another 5 minutes and watching her despair across the top of the stairs in a dramatic whine, I walked away and went back to my work. (And by "work," I mean "Twitter." Let's be honest.)

Several minutes passed and I suddenly realized it was totally quiet upstairs. Crap, I thought. She's either silently dismantling the bathroom sink or she snuck into my room and emptied my dresser drawers.

When I turned the corner to head upstairs, here's what I found:

That's right. She's SOUND ASLEEP, wearing only her princess undies, in the exact spot where I left her whining about not wanting to stay upstairs. Clearly she still needs a nap -- she just doesn't want to be told to take one.

Here's a closer view of her sweet face:

When she finally woke up, she was covered in carpet creases and her left hand was asleep. She'd been sleeping so hard, she almost tumbled down the stairs trying to get up because she had no idea where she was. Fortunately, I was there to catch her -- because obviously I was taking pictures for the blog (duh).

So there you have it. Even the most stubborn three-year-old can still be conquered by the need to nap.

What's the strangest place you've found your child asleep? And speaking of children napping in crazy places, if you haven't seen Naps Happen, go check out this blog immediately.
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Car talk

Here's a puzzle for you...

Why is it that both of my kids can fall asleep in the middle of the day on the way back from the Farmer's Market (a 15-minute drive), but neither one of them even starts to doze off on the hour-plus drive home from the grandparents' at bedtime?

Must be some sort of toddler conspiracy. They know I want to use the quiet time in the car to talk to friends, so they just keep talking to me. And talking. And talking. And talking. And talking. Mixed in with some crying. And a little whining. And more talking.

Thank goodness we're home.