Things to take to bed

Some kids pick a toy, a stuffed animal, a blanket, to take to bed with them. Something to cuddle with. Something to hold on to. Something to keep them safe. Kaelyn hasn't chosen such a toy, but she has taken random things to bed with her. Mostly at nap time but occasionally overnight as well. Here are some of the things Kaelyn has chosen:

-Her large pink plastic diaper pin
-An iced tea spoon
-A 1/2 tablespoon measuring cup
-A Starburst candy wrapper
-A plastic painted sun catcher
-A small concrete Isabel bloom hugs statue
-A static cling St. Patrick's day window decoration
-A 2" square rubber piece meant to be a dart gun target
-The cat's toy jingle ball

I could probably go on. She doesn't take something every time, but when she does, it's always something strange like that that you would never dream of cuddling with! I wish she could find her special toy. I think the closest she has is that large pink plastic diaper pin. We take that with us a lot when we go places. When she gets scared or upset if I give her that it seems to help. It's a good size for her to clutch and she still loves putting her fingers in holes and the pin has a couple of nice sized holes for her to inspect. But not exactly a cuddle-worthy toy! What do you do! A friend of mine has a son and says he always wants to take a ball to bed. Also not something you'd think would be a good bed toy!

Kaelyn slept really well last night. IT was probably one of our better nights of sleep since she was born. She got up at 3:30am and my husband went in and was probably only gone 10-15 minutes. She then got up at 5am and I let her eat and she's still in bed now after 6am. I actually got up because I couldn't sleep anymore! I don't know if that's happened at all since she was born! Maybe I couldn't get back to sleep because I had some things I wanted to do for work. Because now that I think about it, I am getting tired again! Oh well, there's always naptime!

With any luck maybe sending my husband in to Kaelyn the last few nights instead of me has helped. She doesn't expect him to feed her so she stops screaming easier for him. With me she'll just scream till she gets it! I hope it's helping and not a fluke because boy we sure would enjoy sleeping a whole night again! It's been over 10 months! It's time, already!

Yesterday Kaelyn and I met some co-workers for lunch and sometimes I have trouble with her falling asleep on the drive home. It's a 30 minute drive and we usually get home between 1 and 1:30 but naptime isn't until 3 or so. So if she falls asleep on the drive home for 10-15 minutes sometimes she doesn't want to nap at her normal time and then is a major crab in the evening. Yesterday I took a light up, musical ball that activates on motion and I gave that to her for the drive home. She played with it for a little while but then put her head back in her cozy, sleeping position. But since we were bouncing down the road the ball kept going off. Lights. Music. She stayed awake the whole drive! I don't know if it was the ball or not but whatever it was, she was awake and took a nice nap later and was in a great mood all evening!

If we could just get this sleep thing more permanently worked out, she'd be a totally awesome kid. That's been the biggest issue. If she sleeps she's in a better mood all around, as am I. I did buy a book that a listener emailed me about to recommend. Called Sleep Easy or something like that. The book says it helps you customize a sleep plan and then teach it to your child and you should see results in less than a week. The problem? Kaelyn hardly allows me time to read. SO if I even get to READ the book, hopefully it'll give me some pointers as well!

We're looking forward to my nephew's birthday party this weekend. He'll be 4. He's having a party at a Rainbow Playstation type place. It's an indoor swing set sales place that they open in the winter time for parties. Kaelyn has never been on a swing set so it'll be fun to see if she likes to swing etc. I was hoping to build her a swing set in our yard this spring. In my mind, we'd spend hours out there swinging. We'll see if she agrees after the party!

We also need to install her new carseat. She's really overflowing the little baby one. The straps are supposed to be AT the shoulders and hers are well behind her shoulders so it's definitely past time. We have a convertible seat from my sister that can ride backwards and forwards. It had ice cream all over it from my nephew but my mom got it all cleaned up. I finally got ahold of someone at the company that manufactured it and they said its lifespan is good till October of 2011 so we'll put it in my car this weekend. I hope Kaelyn likes it! We've had it sitting in the kitchen for a few weeks now and she's crawled over to it to play with the straps quite a bit so hopefully that will acquaint her with it enough that she'll enjoy it when she actually gets in it.

I'll keep searching for the perfect little cozy toy for Kaelyn to take to bed. Until then, watch out ice tea spoons, measuring spoons, and candy wrappers!