Nothing Good Happens at 3 AM

There is a really sweet little girl who always plays nicely.  She goes to bed on time and wakes up at a decent time in the morning.  She never steals food out of the pantry or watches TV at 3 in the morning.  She never climbs onto the washing machine or raids the art cabinet.  She never eats markers or strips naked in the middle of the afternoon.  She never soaks clean towels in the bathroom sink either.  I'm not making this up.  That sweet little girl certainly does exist. She just does NOT live in this house.

As I lay in my bed last night a sound awakened me--a squeal of delight which overshadowed the low drone of the TV.  Courtney!  I looked at my alarm clock.  It was 3 am.

I got up to investigate. All the lights in the living room were on.  The fireplace was burning and the Treehouse was on.  But worse, she had pulled out the paints and had painted a portion of my kitchen floor--a lovely plethora of red, blue, green, brown and yellow. By the way, that would be FINGER painting.  I grabbed a rag and started scrubbing right away before it dried as Courtney went about her leisure.  Come to think of it, it probably would have been easier to clean after it had dried.  It was washable after all.  But who thinks straight at 3am?

Meanwhile I noticed that Courtney getting some water from the pantry and heading downstairs. I quickly follow her with my intent to intervene.  I caught her just in time to see her pour a cup of water all over her bed. Yes, you read that correctly.  She poured a cup of WATER all over her mattress, her sheets and pillow.  She obviously had been doing this for awhile because her bed and pillow were SOAKED. She pointed at the bed with a smirk on her face and says, "Look mom, I do that." Well, that was immediate cause for disciplinary action.  I didn't care WHO was going to wake up.

 I turned the mattress over end for end, gave Courtney her blanky and told her to go to sleep. I headed back upstairs to finish cleaning the paint mess and discover out the barn bins are rattling.  This simply means that one of the feed bins were empty and someone has to go outside and open up the other bin so that the chickens have feed.

 So I head outside in my bathrobe to change the bins out. Finally I get back to bed and just lay there for an hour and a half.  So much for sleeping.  Grrrrrrrrr!  Now I did, however, get something accomplished in that 90 minutes.  I decided that the next day I was going to make an area in the playroom for Lindsay to sleep and then I was going to buy a lock to ensure Courtney stayed PUT at night.  These nightly escapades of hers were occurring...well, nightly lately.  And believe it or not, I appreciate sleep. 

So today we did exactly that.  Now who's laughing?