Bedtime Battles

Ethan and I have been trying a new tactic this week to combat Julia's need to get out of bed ten thousand times after we've said good-night to her.  First off, to try and limit the amount of times she needs to get up and pee, we've banned her customary bottle of bedside water from her room.  Furthermore, we decided to set up an incentive to battle her habit of getting out of bed (to pee or for whatever reason), then trotting up to our bedroom to report on what she was doing, then climbing into our bed and chattering away at us despite our repeated commands to go back to bed, then staring at herself in our full-length mirror as she takes one snail-paced baby step after another towards our bedroom door.  Over the weekend, I announced to her that for every night she stays in her room after we say good-night, she'll get a check mark.  Once she has amassed a certain number of checks, we'll take her out shopping to buy a new toy.

For your typical kid, this reward-chart type explanation would suffice.  Not for Julia, however.  Always needing to know every single limit and boundary so she is sure not to offend any of the rules, she needed explicit instructions as to what was and what wasn't okay for her to do after we said good-night.

JULIA: But Mama?  What about if I have to go the the BATHROOM?
ME: Well, you can get up to go to the bathroom.  But you don't need to come up to our bedroom and interrupt our tv show to tell us that you went potty.
JULIA: But, like, if I have to go pee I can get up and go?
ME: If you really have to go and you don't feel like you can hold it, then it's okay to get out of bed to go potty.
JULIA: But what if I can't fall asleep?
ME: Well, you already know this.  If you can't fall asleep, you can always look at books in your bed until you start feeling tired.
JULIA: Well, can I play in my bed?
ME: Well, no, it's bedtime, not playtime, so you shouldn't be bringing toys and stuff into your bed.
JULIA: Well, sometimes I *do* bring toys into my bed when I can't sleep.
ME: Well, you can bring a doll into your bed or something, but it's not time to be doing elaborate play games.
JULIA: Well, can I play with my doll?
ME: You can sleep with it.  But it's really not playtime.  You can do quiet things like look at books while you try and get sleepy.
JULIA: So, I can only come into your room if there's, like, an emergency?
ME: Yes.  Of course.  If there's an emergency you should definitely come get us.  But otherwise, you need to stay in your bed and try to sleep.
JULIA: But what if, like, I fell out of my bed onto my head and, like, my forehead was bleeding.  Then would it be okay for me to come get you?
ME: Yes.  If you get hurt or you're bleeding you can come get us.  But no more coming in to say things like you see something that looks like a moth on your bed and it's really a leaf.
JULIA: Well, what if, like, I think I see a fire?
ME: If there's a fire you can leave your room.
JULIA: Well, what if...

And so forth...

I should just make her a giant poster for her wall with every possible scenario and its proper action, like this:


GET OUT OF BED
-Going potty
-Bleeding foreheads
-Bleeding of any kind
-Injuries of any kind
-Fires
-Throwing up or other sickness


STAY IN BED
-You see a leaf in your bed
-You think you might see a spider on the ceiling
-You think you heard a noise
-You think there might be a timber-wolf in your closet
-You think there might be a headless horse in your closet
-You think that anything besides clothes might be in your closet
-You can't fall asleep
-You have anecdotes about school you want to tell us
-You're afraid a tiger is going to leap up through your third story window
-You want to say good-night one last time to us
-You want another snuggle
-You can't find one of your ten million stuffed animals you sleep with


At any rate, the first few nights of the new plan seemed to go pretty well, although Ethan and I still heard Julia traipsing down to the bathroom as late as 10pm.  At least she wasn't coming in to interrupt us while we were attempting to spend some time together at night.  However, last night she blew it, failing to receive her check-mark when I found her rummaging through the marker bin down in the dining room at quarter to ten.  It turns out that, although she was staying in her room, she was not exactly making a champion effort to fall asleep.  Instead, she had been writing a book of short stories in one of the blank-paged, bound writing notebooks she received for Christmas.  25 pages worth, all full of her stories.  We had to have yet another discussion to reassess which "quiet activities" in her bed were acceptable and which ones only served to delay her actual falling-asleep time.

This morning, bummed that she didn't earn her check mark, but beaming with pride over her new book, Julia read me every single story inside.  The book shares its title with that of the first short story:

"Wat They The?" by Julia Rowe

I guess I can see her reasoning now for staying up until 10pm.  If you come up with an idea as inspired as wat they the, it's understandable that you'd want to put off sleep until you can get all of your creative genius down on paper.

The second story in the book is a love story, with the sweet title of "And I need love now.":

Although I have to admit, I don't see how the title connects to the storyline.  I guess I'm just not seeing the deeper meaning and symbolism.  Here is page one, which, to a literary dunce like me, has nothing to do with needing love:

"I'm in the snow did you know.  See?"
(JULIA: Maaaama!  RHYYYYYMING WORDS!)

The final story is Julia's favorite and most comedic, and bears the mysterious title of "So I Am?":

You can tell that Julia was starting to get tired by this point, which should have been an indication that she should go to bed, but she decided to forge on ahead sloppily:

"O be wat o be by wat no I dot Know."
(According to Julia, this picture displays the arms of the two main characters, who are 19 and 8.  The 19-year-old is holding her arms out and shrugging, while the 8-year-old is crossing her arms over her chest.)

Julia waited in utterly delighted suspense to show me the final page of this story:

"Wat wat wat?  the end."
(JULIA: Mama, is that so funny?  I wanted it to be like "WHAAAAAAAT?")

On the back of this final page, she wrote:

"See you lattre."

And, in case that's not enough, she drew the following on the back cover:

(JULIA: And look it.  So you can recycle it.  I made THIS!)

Let's add this to the STAY IN BED column: you want to get markers and a blank journal and stay up until 10pm writing stories in your room.

Tonight, we try again - wish us all luck!