Small price for sanity

When we moved into the house, Ivy got her own room, though it was to do double duty as her room and a guest room, for whenever we had overnight visitors. As such, it has her toddler bed and a queen sized bed in it. She still “requires” adult assistance going to bed at night, and so she winds up sleeping in the queen sized bed.

Unfortunately, this means she is free to get up and move around when she wakes up (as opposed to Before The House, when she was in a pack-and-play). And THAT means when she wakes up and nobody is in bed with her, she seeks me out. And “seek” is the perfect verb, because she hones in on me like a missile (going past Joey, to the far side of the bed where I sleep), where instead of an impending explosion, the end result is tugging tapping and whining “mommy, up, miiiiilk” at anywhere from 2 to 4:30 in the morning. Sometimes I’ll put her back in her bed, other times I hoist her up into ours where she whines about not having the perfect sleep arrangement (not enough pillow and less than half of the bed to herself) and I wind up moving to the guest bed or living room couch. Sometimes she follows me to wherever I relocate.

In addition to the Ivy Missile, my dog follows me around. She can’t jump up onto our bed, so she jumps on my side of the bed pawing at the covers around my head and barking in my ear. She gets hoisted up and burrows down under the covers to the end of the bed, where she settles in on licking toes for 15 or more minutes. This continues even if she gets shoved or gently kicked away.

So, needless to say, my quality of sleep has been um… lacking, to put it mildly… for over 6 months now. It tends to affect my entire day.

This weekend was a breaking point for me. At the advice of others, I spent $3.50 on some doorknob covers, and decided it was time to trap Ivy in her own room at night, and evict the dogs from the bed. Last night was the first night in probably 4 years where it has ONLY been two adult humans in our bed. I felt a little saner this morning.

Joey said he heard Ivy cry at night, presumably when she woke up and discovered that she couldn’t open the door to get out. I did not hear her (score one for crappy hearing! booyah!) However, when she was extracted this morning it was all smiles and snuggling and babbling per usual, so no toddler resentment. Win!

Anyhow, here’s to hoping this breaks that habit, so that Mommy can get back to being less twitchy and grumpy over low-quality sleep. Hooray!