Saving Daylight and Hoarding Stuff

The time change has made my life a little bit more complicated than necessary. Naps are arriving much too late in the afternoon and bedtime for both Ladies has been around the same time as mine for the past few nights.


The Lady, in particular, has been having some issues when it comes to actually going to sleep. Regardless of when we put her down, she spends anywhere from a half-hour to two hours playing with all the crap she has crammed in around her on the bed.


She use to fall asleep with Gerry, Mooney and Giant Gerry (aka. Big Gerry) and maybe one blanket. That soon grew to include a giant Dora blanket, green blankie, brown blankie and a white blankie. Brown and white blankie soon fell out of favor and have been retired to the sidelines but in their place has crept in a slew of stuffed animals--her personal favorite of the moment is Mr. Ducky. He joins a giant puffed pig pillow, Mr. Monks, Medium Monks, Mini Monks and about six other animals that claim space around the perimeter of her bed.


And we can't forget the books, puzzles, electronics and my personal favorite a drum with two glitter pens that she uses as drumsticks. I think my child has hoarding tendencies.


If we try to remove any of the said objects from her bed before she actually falls asleep she either complains (loudly) or just waits for us to leave the room before we hear her heavy footsteps hit the ground above us so that she can retrieve it. The amount of times that her "computer" has fallen from her bed to the floor in the last week or so is basically incalculable at this point.


When I go to check on her before I go to sleep, I try to remove as many items as I can. It never fails that by the time I return at some God-awful hour in the middle of the night to feed the Little Lady, many if not all of those removed items have found their way back into her bed. I can't imagine that she is getting a comfortable rest. The other day I checked on her during a nap and she was sleeping propped up on the giant pink pig with a small Tupperware bowl full of Craisins balanced in the crook of her arm. But hey. . . at least she was napping.


So, I am a little concerned with her attachment to all this stuff. I know that a two-year old is hard to reason with, so maybe it is that she just likes all her stuff to be near her, however, yesterday when she woke up like a bear from her nap, she started screaming at me that she wanted to keep her soaking wet diaper on. When I finally was able to extract that sop of a mess off her little body, she started screaming "I want my dirty diaper" at a pretty high volume and then stuck her hand into the diaper genie to try and retrieve it. I am hoping that she doesn't start bringing diapers into bed with her as well. There is only so much room in a toddler bed and there is only so much I can take.