Last night, about fifteen minutes after we put the kids in bed, Agnes and I heard their bedroom door open. Neither of us got up to see what was going on. We didn’t hear anything more, which was a little strange, but we figured we would hear something if there was anything to be concerned about. We both commented that it was a little weird, but didn’t really think anything of it.
Even after moving the girls from cribs into beds, neither of them have been getting out of bed until we get them in the morning. Miranda even yells in the morning that she needs to pee until we get her. We’ve been telling them that they can get up to use the bathroom, but we didn’t think they had started. Anyway, it was our theory that Eleanor finally listened to this, used the bathroom and went back to bed. Eleanor seemed like the more likely of the two since she got up at least once last month saying she couldn’t find her sister.
About an hour later, I was doing some cleaning up around the house, and I saw that the kids’ door was still open. I didn’t want to disturb them, so I went to pull it closed, and when I looked into their room, I noticed Eleanor’s bed was empty. It didn’t seem likely that Eleanor had been wandering around downstairs quietly for an hour, but I also had no idea where she was. I finally checked the guest room and found her asleep on the bed. No one regularly sleeps in the guest room, but sometimes we put Eleanor in there if we need to separate her from Miranda during weekend nap time.
Several more hours later, I was turning off all of the lights in the house, and I heard Eleanor yell, “It’s dark!!” I was pretty sure she was asleep, but I guess she was still sensitive enough to the light to notice. I took the opportunity to bring her back to her room and put her back in bed.
This morning, I said that Eleanor had gone to sleep in the guest room and asked her why she did it. She seemed reluctant to answer. She said, “’Cause… ’cause… ’cause…”. Then, in a tiny voice, “I don’t like my bed.” After a moment, in an even smaller voice, “I like the pink bed.”
I’ve been writing about Eleanor’s changing tastes in colors for the last two months or so. Her sheets are currently all blue, but I guess she’s decided that she doesn’t like those any more. I told her that she needs to sleep in her own bed, and maybe we could go shopping this weekend for pink sheets.