Be Careful What You Wish For!

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about how since we moved, S has been a lot closer to Ted than ever before. I was worried that she was relying on him for comfort so much. I felt that I must be failing as a mother, that she was suddenly so attached to her teddy bear rather than me.

Fast forward a few weeks, and all that has changed.

S had been happily sleeping in her own bed, and had even slept through the night a few times without coming into my bed… she’s now firmly back in my bed! Each night as we go up the stairs I ask S where she is sleeping tonight, and she replies, “Mummy’s bed!” On the few occasions she’s gone to bed in her own bed, she’s still been awake several hours later, and ended up in my bed any way.

Not content with sleeping in mummy’s bed, she has also moved several of her cuddly toys into my bed, as well as numerous books, her drink bottle, her special pillow, and sometimes her own duvet. As well as this, she seems to need not just to be near me, or to have a hand touching me at all times – as has happened before – but she needs to be as close to me as possible. This means that when I go to bed, her toys and books have been lined up against the wall, and she is in the centre of the bed – if I’m lucky!

I edge my way into the bed, and lay down next to her – at which point, she generally gets as close to me as possible. More than once, this has meant her physically laying on top of me. If I’m lucky, she just grabs my arm and cuddles it. When I wake up in the mornings (after several interruptions during the night), it is invariably with her smiling face a couple of inches from mine.

During the day time, she needs lots of cuddles. When I say lots of cuddles I mean that some days, we’ve had to stop what we’re doing to have a cuddle several times before we’ve even made it to the kitchen for breakfast! She gets upset and into a state over the slightest little thing, then has a cuddle and more often than not is fine again for a while – sometimes for a couple of hours, sometimes for twenty minutes.

She’s tired, too. Suddenly she can’t walk very far. She wants me to pick her up all the time… Actually, I’m not sure if that’s tiredness, or just that she can’t handle a whole trip around town without needing a cuddle!

Some mornings, it’s a massive relief to drop her off at nursery, after a refusal to eat breakfast, the need to have her drink in the pink cup then the green cup then the blue cup, then no actually the pink cup. I’m drained and it’s only 8am! On our days off, I try really hard not to do anything that might cause problems but since the things that cause these meltdowns change by the minute, that’s hard to do! I’m more than a little concerned that with nursery closed for two weeks from today, I may go crazy!

Part of me feels that this is just because it’s Christmas – our routine has been all over the place, she’s excited but she’s not entirely sure what she’s excited about. All of a sudden there’s a tree and bells and chocolate for breakfast and all sorts of excitement at nursery. All of a sudden, the boring, predictable routine of our lives has been tossed out of the window and replaced with all this bonkers nonsense and Christmas trees and lights and trips out from nursery. She’s excited by it all, but I suppose it’s got to be a bit of an overload of excitement after the first week or so.

This on top of the fact we’ve recently moved house and things are still up in the air; there are still a lot of things that don’t have a home, and it’s all still a bit new and weird.

Perhaps two weeks together at our new home will help to iron out some of the kinks, and then S will return to nursery in January and a welcome return to order and routine, and everything will be peachy by the middle of the month! I have my fingers crossed…