I give up!

After three days of highly interrupted sleep, I am almost ready to call it quits and to call it a failed experiment.

Not quite, I learnt that given the right kinds of incentives (like a double decker bed), Anjali will take up a challenge, even if it is something as challenging as sleeping by herself in Patti's room and succeed in the challenge.

But Sophia is too young to sleep by herself. She didnt want to give up on the double bed, and she didnt want to give up sleeping next to me, and so she compromised by making me sleep with her and Anjali in Patti's room bed.

Which is rather small and cramped for three people, especially if two of them are auditioning for world cup football.

So I used to let them sleep and then snuck back into the bedroom.

To top it up, Sophia, who inherited the talking in her sleep problem from me, has developed a certain interest in scary stories, like Heckedy Peg.

After reading the monster under the bed about a hundred times and playing monster with me and husband last night, getting chased all over the bedroom with a monster in pink sock claws, the kid's already over active imagination went into over drive.

She woke up at 3pm, in patti's room and started crying about monsters in the bed

To give us credit, Anjali and I did an imitation of monsters scraping the bed spread when we were lying down to sleep. So that probably added to the whole thing.

"i dont want monshters under my bed mama!!!"

So I tried taking her back to our bedroom, but she would have none of it. She cried and ran on tiptoes all the way back to patti's room. So I had to cuddle up horizontally again on the bed that only reached my knees, trying to make the kid get back to sleep.

So I made a decision. This morning, when Anjali woke up, I asked her

"Would you like the double decker bed in the bedroom instead of patti's room??"

She paused for a while before answering

"Why mummy?"

"there are a couple of reasons". I said. "the first is that Sophia is too small to sleep by herself and yesterday, she couldnt sleep properly because she dreamt of monsters under the bed"

"But we only scratched on top of the bedspread. Not under the bedspread", reasoned Anjali. "And its only for play mother!"

"I know this", i said. "But Sophia is too small to differentiate between what is real and what is pretend"

"What is the other reason?"

"Do you really want to sleep by yourself in patti's room, or are you doing it because you want the double decker bed?"

"Because I want the double decker bed"

"Then why dont we put it in our bedroom?"

"Can we put it on top of daddy's cupboard?"

Obviously she has noticed the issue of space

"Nope, but we can take out the small bed and put the double decker there instead". I said. "When we come back from Romania, we will go to IKEA again and get the bed. Ok?"

"Ok!!"

"And when you get bigger and Sophia gets as big as you, and if you want to move the double decker bed to patti's room, we can do that"

We spoke to husband about the conclusion and it seems to be settled, except for one thing.

The double decker bed will block the window.

Well. I guess we will work something out.