Moments to Remember: She's Cracking Us Up!

Brookelynne has started not wanting to go to sleep in her bed once again, and as always, I am still making her do it. Each time we cycle back through this fight, I end up having to find a new way to get her to stay in her bed and go to sleep. The most recent thing keeping her from going to sleep is that she's pitching fits once I close the door behind me. So we went through several ideas of things to keep her in bed, including talking about it, time out and spankings for screaming at me, giving her extra toys to take to bed with her, and yet, nothing had worked.

Sooo, last night I had gone back into her room to put her back in bed, tucked her in, kissed her head and said "Sweet dreams, baby doll" (like I always do) and before I could make it to the door, she had sat up in her bed, screaming at the top of her lungs, kicking her feet and slamming her fists into her mattress. [in case you were unaware, that behavior is not acceptable lol]. So I immediately turned on my heels, going back to her fully intending on putting her in time out. As I reached for her and started to speak, I saw "Baby Doll" (her baby doll she was sleeping with) and remembered what my friend Angela had started doing with her daughter, which was putting the toys in time out instead of her daughter, and it had worked great.

Soooo, I grabbed Baby Doll instead of Brooke and said "You know not to act like that, and because you're pitching a fit, Baby Doll is going to time out and baby bottle is going too" (the baby's bottle) At which point she screamed "NOOOOOOOO" I stepped over to the time out place, which is on the other side of  a big piece of furniture and not visible from the bed and sat the doll up against the wall in the same place we sit Brooke for time out, with the bottle in her lap, and stood up to see the funniest. thing. ever. :)

Brookelynne slid off her bed and 'ran' over to where time out is (it was only a few steps) and looked around the 'corner' so that she could see Baby Doll and when she saw Baby Doll, she screamed "Noooooooooooooooo!!!", covered her eyes with both hands and turned her back to 'the sight of Baby Doll in a corner", crying. I literally had to turn away from her to stop from laughing but it was just so pricelessly dramatic!

She's such a mess! Don't worry, Baby Doll got to come out of time out a minute later and everyone went to bed shortly after.

On a side note, I thought I would keep using this technique as needed, but tonight when I tried to put Baby Doll in time out, Brookelynne got all excited and jumped out of bed to 'do it herself'. Saying "I'm Mama, I do". Not exactly what we were going for Brookelynne....