sleeeeeeeeeeeeepy

My husband, the one who gets to leave the house for 9 hours everyday, decided that it would be a good idea to take the doorknob guard off of Claire's bedroom door so that when she wanted to she could open her door herself, and let herself out. Needless to say, she didn't nap for five consecutive days. She spent time in our bed, in our closet, in "Nonno and Nonni's bed", emptying the drawers of my desk, playing with soap and light bulbs in the linen closet, having tea parties with all of her friends in the hallway. Anything but napping.

Brian kept saying, "you just have to be consistent, and she'll learn that she has to stay in her room." But he wasn't here to go back up the stairs after five minutes, and then 3 minutes after that, and then 2 minutes after that...ad nauseum. So eventually, every day I would think to myself, "what harm can she get into? and she's not waking Ben up, so..." And then I would find her playing with light bulbs. Or crumpling photographs. Ugh.

And then this morning. At 5:30. She crawled into our bed. And wiggled. And squirmed. And talked. And wiggled some more. And then at 6:04 Ben woke up, and Claire "helped" me get him to settle back down. So I put her in her bed, and told her it was still night-time. Four minutes later she was back in our room. And shortly thereafter she was up on my side of the bed, reading books, and staring at me while I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. And there was a lot more wiggling, squirming, and talking. And at 6:22 Ben woke up again and really meant it, and by that time I knew I was not going to get anymore sleep. So our day started early. And my kids were a lot on the whiny side.

Naptime was late so they could enjoy a brief visit with Grandma. And after the fifth time putting her back in her room, I gave up. I put the doo-hickey back on the doorknob. And she cried, and wailed, and gnashed her teeth. She probably would have rent her clothes, if she knew what that meant. And within about 3 1/2 minutes she was fast asleep. Granted, she slept on the floor just in front of the door, but she slept. And oh, it was glorious.