If You Don’t Sleep Now, Daddy and I Will Come Home in 15 Minutes

Last week, my husband and I went out of town for two days. I asked our nanny if she could stay with Sunny and her sister for two nights and she reluctantly said yes. I say ‘reluctantly’ because usually the baby goes down peacefully at 6:45 PM while Sunny tortures the nanny until 10 PM by making her look for snacks that she knows we don’t actually have and begging her read ten books to her before she goes to sleep.  She then pretends she’s having “terrible nightmares” before she’s even fallen asleep. If I am home during these “nightmares” I walk her back into her room and offer to sprinkle “good dream fairy dust” (available at any local Rite Aid) all over her while chanting “Sunny will have only happy and fabulous dreams tonight.” If our nanny is home, Sunny tells her that her “fairy dust” is a different brand than mine and it’s not working.

I’m not sure how Sunny does this, but quite often as another desperate measure to try and stay up later, she’ll say she has to go number two and then sits on the toilet and pushes and squeezes until somehow, by some total miracle, something comes out.

My husband and I always call in to check on her and will occasionally threaten to come home from wherever we are (even if it’s in another state) within fifteen minutes if we get the impression she’s nowhere near going to sleep.

Last week, Sunny took torturing our nanny to a whole new level.  By the time we got back, I swear Valentina looked like she had aged five years and her hair looked insane, like she hadn’t brushed it in a week. Apparently, the night before we got home, Valentina had finally gotten Sunny to go to sleep after hours of negotiating how many books and stories she was going to get. At 2:30 AM, Valentina was dead asleep and Sunny woke up. She climbed into bed with her as if it were two in the afternoon and said, “Wake up! It’s cartoon time! Didn’t Mommy and Daddy tell you that I’m allowed to watch cartoons in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep?”

Valentina explained to Sunny that this was simply not going to happen and Sunny just looked at her and said, “Okay, but you have to sprinkle the good dream fairy dust on me.”

That explained why Valentina looked like she did. Poor lady.

(Image via Shutterstock).