Sleep (lack of)

What is it about two year olds and going to bed? Mole has always been a good sleeper on the whole, set in her routine, out like a light bang on seven pm. But since the twoness came upon her, she turns into a sort of restless buzzing bee at night.

Last night Mole came into bed with us at two o’clock in the morning. She brought Hedgehog’s phone with her. This is a plastic retro style phone on wheels that Hedgehog got for her first birthday (one of her few presents because we didn’t have a party as such), but Mole had already claimed it and scurried it away into her bedroom before Hedgehog even looked up from eating the wrapping paper.

Mole gracefully crawls over Mr M&H’s head because this is obviously the easiest way to move across the bed, and also the most fun. Once the telephone is deposited on the pillow, with an “I put it there”, she sidles up to me to play with the freckle on my neck, a little spot she is obsessed by. It is like a comfort blanket I suppose, only it is attached to me. Hedgehog is showing the same tendencies with the freckle now, will they start fighting over it like they fight over the toys? I wonder. Last week I was sandwiched between Hedgehog on the boob on one side, while Mole, not to be left out, reached out her arm around my neck to find the beloved freckle. If she can’t find it, there are tears.

So anyway, after cuddles and freckle time, Mole’s wide eyes staring directly at me without blinking into the gloom, I suggest she goes back to her own bed, which she does, pulling the telephone behind her on its string, squeeking down the landing. She wants a story, I compromise with a short song, she wants the night light left on, which also lights up half the landing. I get back into bed and hear her talking on the telephone. “Hello? hello? yes, yes, alright, okay, bye”. Then there is more stomping around and squeeking of the telephone wheels. Then a “Mummy, what you doing?, where areeeeee youuuuuuu?”. Mr M&H groans.

By three o’clock I turn her night light off, and find her out cold on the bed, still in mid grinding position, hands between her legs. Mole’s way of relaxing. To my secret relief, I found another little girl at playgroup last week who was grinding away on a piece of soft play foam. It involved a tug of war to get it off her and pack it away. So now I have proof that this is common, and normal, thank god.

But the night wakings of Mole continue, while Hedgehog angelically sleeps through it all, sucking her thumb, preferring to wake up at some insane time in the morning, just to balance things out.

I suspect that Mole is in transition with her naps, and in a couple of months, it may be time to drop them altogether. I will miss her naps when they go, because they mean I can have naps too. Lately she’s been doing marathon three hour naps in the afternoon, followed by evenings running up and down the stairs in her pyjamas until ten o’clock, before finally conking out in the (you guessed it) grinding position.

It’s a wobble in Mole’s sleep patterns, not helped by the summer daylight hours, shining around her curtains. But this week I’m finding that waking her up after one hours nap in the day, might make her grumpy for ten minutes, but it makes her sleep at night, and I get my evenings back.

Now I just have to figure out a way to get Hedgehog to sleep past five am, wish me luck.