Caught Blanket Handed!

Crime Scene: Mom and Dad's Bed
Accused: Lydia the Bedtime Bandit
Mystery: How does she do it?

Two year old Lydia used to be the queen of stalling and delaying the inevitable that comes at 8:00pm, Bedtime! We finally resorted to making a sticker chart in order to motivate her to complete her bedtime rituals and then Go To Sleep! It has been working rather well and we thought we had her all figured out until she added the new stall tactic, "Please leave my door open." I'm sure you're all thinking this is a harmless request, so did we. Until this weekend when we tucked her in, finished our songs and kisses goodnight and left the door cracked open. Mom was downstairs, Dad was outside and we assumed Lydia was in bed. We went about our evening and even ended up closing her door while Mom cut Dad's hair in order to not wake her. Two hours had passed and we decided to retire for the night. Dad went up to our room and turned on the light, he was at his closet changing clothes when he suddenly heard DEEP BREATHING! He turned around to see none other than Lydia the Bedtime Bandit asleep on Mom's pillow completely tucked in under the covers. Holding back his laughter he got Mom right away and we tried to solve the mystery. Clearly she had to have tip toed out of her room when the coast was clear and quietly enough across the wood floor and up the stairs that we didn't hear her. The amazing part is how she managed to step on the wood bed frame and then pull the sheets while mountain climbing into our bed (it is rather high off the ground)!

We were puzzled but put her back in her bed and enjoyed lots of good giggles over this one. The next night after we said goodnight and were both downstairs I thought I heard a little pitter patter on the wood floor above. "Lydia," I called, "Get back in bed." Then I heard the little pitter patter race back into her bedroom. Or so I thought . . . once again we later went to go to bed and found the Bandit tucked beautiful into our bed. How does she do it we wondered?!

Finally last night Mom and Dad put Lydia to bed. A few moments later Mom went to go downstairs to get something and at that exact moment ran into little Lydia with her pink blanket pulled over her head leaving just enough room to peek out from under it. She saw mom's feet turned around and with out a word ran back into her room. It was Hillarious. I came back up and told Dad all about it. 5 minutes later Dad and Mom were both downstairs when suddenly Dad heard a THUD! He went running upstairs saying, "I think Lydia fell out of her bed." Much to his surprise and her dismay he caught her going up the next flight of stairs and put the Bedtime Bandit with Blanket in hand back to bed. No, she had not fallen, but after realizing we were both downstairs she had jumped out of her bed to make her escape! This time she was busted but luckily she is so stinking cute she got off with an easy sentence: Now the door gets closed until after she falls asleep!