Nancy had worked out, in a rage the previous night, how to climb over the top of her cot.
Her fall was only broken as I, Will Carling style,
skidded across the bedroom floor, shouting ‘nooooooooooooooooooooooo’, and catching
her milliseconds before she hit the ground.
I’ll do it before bedtime, make a big fuss about the new Peppa Pig duvet set my mum had bought her.
And hey presto.
We’ve got ourselves a big
girl’s bed.
Turns out the cot is an absolute nightmare to pull to bits. It’s all wedged in.
I was splitting wood left right and centre as I tried to make sense of the instructions that were missing a page (curse of buying stuff off E-bay), as Nancy enthusiastically told me, ‘you’re sweating mummy.’
At 8ish, the bed finally looks sleepable in.
And I do a Pimp
My Ride intro to her new, improved, grown-up room. As I’m mid-jazz hands, Nancy
asked, ‘where’s my cot?’
It’s in about 20 pieces; wedged under the bed, behind the
wardrobe, crammed into the boiler cupboard. That’s where.
Night one, and I go into her room at about 11pm to see how she’s
getting on, and momentarily panic my face off, as she’s not in bed.
Her duvet is on the floor, pillows everywhere, but no Nancy.
And then I spot her, bum in the air, head stuck underneath a chair.
Fast asleep.
I pull her out gently
by her ankles, and put her back into bed. And she sleeps there for the majority of the night. That’s surely a success. So I give myself a premature pat on the back.
Because by night two I realised that my plan to make bedtime
less stressful was at best ill-conceived. As she quickly works out the advantage
to a bed without sides.
She can get out WHENEVER SHE WANTS TO.
The following morning I was woken at about 4ish to a breathy
Nancy whispering, ‘kiss Rabbit,’ as she thrust him in my face.
She’s wised up to bedtimes too.
Once we’ve said night to her, unlike when she was in her cot
and she eventually gave up, she now realises that she only has to open her bedroom
door and, voilĂ , she’s back in the room.
So the brainwave was quite possibly a brain malfunction.
And a good night’s sleep is, once again, a thing of the
past.