To sleep or not to sleep. Why is the question!

Princess Grumpy has been driving Eric and I nuts last few weeks at bed time. She just will not and does not want to sleep. I realize this sounds like an insane thing to be worried about…but she wakes up at odd hours to go to the bathroom….which is a great and wonderful thing….and we love the lack of pull-ups….but then she can’t get back to sleep in her bed. (Now remind you it is 1-5 in the am…so most normal people are sleeping).

If we do not catch her…she has this stealth mode that no one can hear her coming…and in this mode she is devious, destructive and down right annoying. In the last week she has done the following….while wandering around late at night…..

Played with Vaseline (which she got from the top shelf of her shelves above the toilet) and put it all over her bathroom….thanks Tammy & Dez for cleaning it off. Took my deodorant and put it all over the mirror in the hallway bathroom. She figured out how to open the child proof locks in the bathroom and got into the peroxide and made a toothpaste volcano with it. She knows not to eat the tooth paste…in her words “that will make me sick” and she doesn’t do that. But she enjoyed shoving the roll of toilet paper in the toilet with the plunger so much that she had to try to get a second one in.

I know it is normal to want to mix and play and do cool things with slimy and greasy items….but really!!!! She has taken this to an art form! I really hope this all related to her becoming a great scientist or a doctor some day.

I am sure,I was never that bad ..... Ok I personally know that alka seltzer does not blow up the toilet I loved playing with it as a child! (Sorry Grandpa Harry). SHe is so like her dad in her facination with toilets. She has to know where they are and visit them so often. (again this could be a really good thing) But she is so quite and so sneaky that unless I sleep on the floor of the bathroom I don’t hear her. NO ONE could hear.

SO I got this brilliant idea last night. I would have her exercise with me…maybe I could just tire her out and if I had to wash a few sheets…oh well…that is so much easier than Vaseline on the floor!

I walked for about 30 minutes on the treadmill at about 3 ½ miles an hour all the while she is bouncing on the exercise tramp and talking to me. “Mom this…” and “mom that…” and her mouth is running a mile a minute…”what are you doing that for?”, “why are you worried about your butt?”

I start my cool down and invite her to join me. I turn it way down and she starts walking and after a minute she turns around and jump into my arms and says “I love you mom!” ok most of the time this particular vocal tone that she used is precipitous for the words…”Don’t be mad at me but….” I tell her I love her too. Next moment she leans over close and whispers in my ear, "I like your big butt mom, and thanks for wanting to get healthy for us….but really you aren’t going anywhere...so I just don't get it" We hug, she jumps off and runs back to the blanket on the couch and says "I'll wait till you are done and then we will go upstairs".

So I guess I can laugh a little today and I will walk / run and at least know that when we sit and share our ice cream tonight…. That she isn’t really trying to secretly kill me from the ice cream just the sleep deprivation!