The Shuffler and the Exorcist...

It was 97 nights before Christmas when all through the house, not a creature was stirring…except for Evie who thought it was totally acceptable to wake up at 1:30am to play.

She’s normally proper bang on with her sleeping; she has been for months. We’ll put her down to sleep at about 9:00pm and that’s it till the morning. But on this one particular night, she turned into the baby from Hell. In fact, Satan would probably send her back.

I got up thinking she was a bit peckish. I made her a bottle and fed her in total silence, otherwise if I talk to her, she thinks it’s playtime. She took most of the bottle and I put her back down to sleep. I felt reeeeally smug because she actually started to nod off! I climbed back into bed, shut my eyes and prepared to sail back into the land where Johnny Depp is my husband and I have 1,000 cats.

*shuffle shuffle shuffle*

What was that? Surely she can’t be awake again?

*shuffle shuffle*

She is. She’s awake. I didn’t even want to open my eyes, because if I opened my eyes, the little git would know that I was awake and she’d want to play. I prayed that if I pretended to be asleep, she’d get bored and nod off.

“BA BA BA BA BA!”

She was wide a-bloody-wake, which meant I was equally wide a-bloody-wake. I was determined to show her who was boss, so I gave her her dummy and her teddy and turned over. By the 22nd time of doing this, I knew it was no good. Every time I sat up, a massive gummy smile would spread across her face. Normally, it would make my heart melt, but it was having the complete opposite effect. You know the film, The Exorcist? I was Regan. I was just waiting for a Priest to barge into the bedroom, throw a crap load of Holy Water on me and start shouting “the power of Christ compels you!”.

Absolutely nothing was working! The more I tried to ignore the shuffling, the more it was doing my head in. And then to make it 10x worse, she started scratching the side of her Next To Me with her little devil claws, so I had that to compete with as well! I love the little mite like crazy but at 4:30 in the morning, I was ready to hand her over to Madonna.

I think all of the attention I was giving her eventually wore her out, because at 5:00am, she finally shut her big Bambi eyes and went to sleep. It’s hard not to get frustrated with her, but when she woke up 4 hours later and smiled at me, I instantly forgave her. Never in my life have I been excited to nap during the day, though!!

Written by Bekka Louise Forsyth for her blog, And Then There Was Three.