Ron and I have decided that kids – or at least ours, since they’re the ones we have the most experience with – tend to get more difficult the more of them that you have. For example, Abby was a pretty easygoing baby and toddler. Even as a preschooler she would listen to us most of the time. In fact, still today she has a very difficult time not telling us the truth or following instructions. There’s just no guile or ‘sneaky’ in her – it’s not how she’s wired.

Hannah, on the other hand, is the Queen of Sneaky. Or so she thinks – right now her facial expressions still give her away for the most part, but I do truly worry what she’ll be like in another eight to ten years once she’s got the routine down. She was a generally easy baby as well (once we got her on an antacid for her reflux, that is), but not so easy to deal with as a toddler or preschooler. This little girl wants to do what she wants to do, when she wants to do it and will throw a major fit even now if she’s so inclined. With her, it’s all about the drama.

Then there’s Becca. Who was also a rather easy baby, but once she hit toddlerhood – yikes. She is 100% stubborn and opinionated and refuses to budge an inch if she doesn’t want to. She and Ron clash a lot – I’ll give you one guess which parent she gets that trait from, lol. With her, we usually need to get creative. Oh we don’t give in to her every whim (we really don’t), but I’ve learned to choose my battles wisely – and to use distraction, mis-direction, reverse psychology and all those other fun little techniques as much as I can too.

Take sleep, as an example. As a baby she went from bassinet to crib with minimal fuss. And even transitioned nicely to a toddler and then ‘big girl’ bed. At some point afterward, however, she suddenly had decided that she no longer wanted to sleep in her own bed (or even her own room) and we went through a period that included her sleeping on the floor in front of a baby gate we used to keep her at least in her own room. You may remember this stage, or at least the cute sleeping-toddler-on-floor pictures I used to post way back when…

All cuteness aside, she would’ve been perfectly willing to sleep on the floor of her bedroom or in the doorway forever (stubborn, remember?), so we finally buckled down, took the baby gate off and told her firmly that she needed to sleep in her bed.

Switching her from a room of her own into sharing with Hannah probably helped at that point – the change of scenery involved both her and Hannah sleeping in new (to them) beds, and they both did. For a while, at least. Until Becca decided that Ron’s and my bed was preferable to her own.

I’ll state publicly here that yes, I probably should have done more to keep a certain little someone in her own bed at all times. But in my own defense, Ron and I now sleep in the basement, on the opposite side of the house from the stairway. So returning little nighttime wanderers to their rightful location isn’t just a matter of walking her back across the hall anymore. But even that I could’ve (begrudgingly) managed. The bigger issue came along last summer when Abby began having difficulties falling asleep and became impossible to get back to sleep once she did wake up. On the few occasions where I did insist that Becca go back upstairs into her own bed, she protested – loudly. And we ended up with all five of us awake, angry, frustrated and – not so incidentally, tired and grumpy for days afterward. In my eyes, it just wasn’t worth it.

Not to mention that yes, Becca is my ‘baby’ and I did kind of enjoy having her snuggle in bed with us. She always has started out the night in her own bed. But about 75% of the time, she’d then end up in ours at some point. Often I didn’t even realize she’d joined us until I woke up the next morning with her there. Ron was more inclined to force the issue – he’s the one she would kick, unless we put her on the outside of the bed with me in the middle between the two of them. But I really didn’t mind so much. She became quite the little ‘snugglebug’ and I slept just fine with her there.

Still… I knew that she really did need to be sleeping all night in her own bed, for her own good and ours. So about a week before her 4th birthday last month, I started making offhand comments here and there about how, “four-year-olds sleep in their own beds – ALL night”. Now I never, at any point, overtly told her, “You can’t come back into our bed ever again”. But I just kept casually dropping those references over the next several days. And then on her birthday, when we put her to bed that night, I told her in a very excited voice, “Now that you’re four, you get to sleep in your own bed all night, every night!”. I made it sound like a privilege. I got her excited about the idea too. I left no room for argument. And I apparently have succeeded where threats, bribes, punishments, and incentives failed.

Because for once, she seems to have listened. In the two weeks since her birthday, Becca has slept in her own bed. All night. Every night.

Well, except for once when she was sick and kept waking up coughing all night. I made an exception – but even then she only spent a couple of hours in bed with us, and she hasn’t come downstairs any night since.

I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ve finally got our bed back to ourselves – permanently. Cautious, because I don’t put anything past this little girl, who is very definitely too smart for her own good (or ours). And because I’m assuming that by writing this post, I’m jinxing things somehow. But we’ll see.

Although, I’m coming to find that I kind of miss our stealthy, snuggly visitor just a teensy little bit. Oh don’t worry, I’m not going to ever let her know that. And I’m certainly not inviting her back into our bed now that we’ve finally got her staying there. But still… There’s nothing quite like wrapping your arms around your child and falling (back to) sleep, safe and secure in the knowledge that she’s still your baby. Even if for just a little while longer.