Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Shadows

I'm  at a loss here.  The last few days have been a nightmare when it comes to bed time and I'm not sure how to fix it.

Our bed time routine is simple:  jammies and milk around 7:45ish and then Bailey watches and episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse in "mommy's bed", then she goes to her own bed after the show.  I turn on her night lights and her lullaby CD, we read two books, sing our own lullaby and I say goodnight.

The last three nights, though, have been difficult.  All of a sudden, Bailey is crying that she's "scared of shadows".  She's been so worked up over it that I haven't been able to get her to bed before 10 or 11pm, and then she's up again for the day between 7-7:30am.  The first night, I kind of blew it off, thinking that she was only saying it to get me to let her stay up in my bed a little longer.  But the second and third night have me worried that we'll never get back to our old, easy routine.

She has two night lights in her room, so it's really not all that dark in there.  Granted, I did have to move a lamp out of her room the first night.  It's a beautiful lamp, but the way the night light kept hitting it really was making a freaky shadow on her ceiling.  So the lamp went in another room, but she's still afraid.  Last night, I gave her an old teddy bear that used to be mine when I was little.  I told her that as long as she had mommy's bear she didn't need to be scared of the shadows.  She still cried a bit when she realized I was leaving the room.  And, as a result, she's not sleeping as well...which is making her grumpy during the day.

I don't want to screw up our routine even more, but at the same time I cannot leave her crying in the dark at night if she is legitimately scared (which, it seems she really is).  I have no clue what to do here.

Any advice?

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