Nocturnal emotions (sorry)

I have that slightly dizzy feeling that no amount of coffee can remove. My eyes ache a tiny bit and there's a noise, or a pressure, or something, just behind my ears. I'm going to go right ahead and blame Mabel.

Ironically, she didn't have a bad night. The problem is that she didn't have it - the okay night - in her own bed, she had it in mine. When B and I were still downstairs last night, having caught up on both How I Met Your Mother and Doctor Who, and I was starting to think I should go to bed - around 10.15, then - we heard a little thump thump thump and thought, 'Oh-ho! What goings on are these?' I went upstairs and found Mabel prone on our bed, wailing and telling me that she was never going to sleep in her own bed again.

I suppose I could have put up a fight, but much the easiest thing seemed to be to go with the flow at that point. I started telling her Cinderella, and by the second sentence she was out for the count. (It's basically an automatic response now. And probably the only fairy tale I know.) So that was all well and good but now there was a three-year-old taking up a lot of space in our bed.

B decided to take Mabel's bed for the night. I suppose that made sense, but I still think he got off lightly. I got ready for bed and assessed my options. She was right in the middle, but I decided there was slightly more room on my usual side, so that's where I got in, with Mabel's back to me. She wiggled backwards to get closer. After five minutes, I got out and walked around to the other side of the bed and lay down there instead. She moved towards me. I left her head where it was and pushed the rest of her body away from me, diagonally across the bed. Her head nudged closer to me.  She was on top of the covers and I was trying to be underneath them. And so it continued for at least half the night.

At some later point I realised that she was actually sleeping on the other side like a normal human in a queen-size bed, but by then the damage was done. I'll take back her father any day. I won't even complain about the snoring.