Sleep drama...Again

We are making a return to the sleep-deprived cranky toddler. We took the side off of her crib completely to make it a "big girl bed" and with her newly discovered independence, Roxanne is in a sleep deficit. She gets up and turns the light on, picks up books, walks around, etc., but we still feel like this is just what's next. She's been doing really well with her potty training, so we want to make it so that she can get up to go potty if we go down that route in the next few months. Or year. And really, it just felt like it was time. She seems to LOVE the "big girl bed" and talks about it a lot, but it's definitely an adjustment. I've been reading horror stories of kids being up and down all night during this transition, and it certainly hasn't been that bad, but missing one or two hours of sleep at this age still has an impact on her. In any case, this new transition has brought on some very funny (after the fact) moments. Here's my favorites:

*As I said, she likes to turn the light on, but she can't reach it. At first, she was putting her chair under the switch and climbing on it to reach. After I caught on around 10pm the other night, I moved the chair out of her room. Twenty minutes later, she walked out of her room crying, and telling me that I needed to put the chair back and she wouldn't stand on it again. When I refused, she figured out how to pull her laundry basket (with dirty clothes in it) to the switch, and stand in that to turn the light on. So I put that basket on the glider in her room. She pulled it down, and turned the light on. When I went in to turn it back off and put her back to bed, I put the basket in the playroom. She had a meltdown, and told me that the laundry basket had to stay in her chair (the glider). I told her no, and that it was going to stay in the playroom. She kept on and on, and since it was 11 by this point, I just put the basket back on the chair. But apparently, this was not enough. She insisted on finding Justin and telling him that the basket was to stay on the chair. After that, she stayed in her bed and fell asleep.

*A couple of nights ago, she came out of her room crying and asking for me. When I went to her, I brought her back to her room and put her in her bed, but she kept crying and saying something I couldn't understand. When I finally got her to calm down, I could understand her, and she was asking me to "get that scary crocodile out" of her room. So we talked about it and decided there indeed was no scary crocodile. An hour later, we had a repeat, except this time, she wanted me to get the eyeballs out of her bed. Seriously. How gross is that???? I finally decided that she was talking about the dot pattern on her sheets, since they do sort of look like cartoon eyeballs in the dark. But they are dots with hearts and flowers in them! Talk about backfiring...

Today, we had an unexpected day off. So we ran lots of unnecessary errands (i.e. window shopping and buying little things here and there) and just generally had a nice day. We came home to nap, and Roxanne was just really not having it. At one point, she snuck out of her room, went in the playroom and closed the door behind her. But she totally got herself caught by immediately picking up her Muno guitar. I could hear her playing the Foofa song, so I came in and put her back to bed. Let's hope she doesn't figure out any new sneaky techniques. I'm apparently not very intimidating when it comes to these situations...