Heather was acting rather unsettled at bedtime this evening. We had finished story time and Jess and Corinne had left the room while I stayed with Heather for a few minutes while she got comfortable.
After only being in bed about a minute she got up and climbed down in to my lap and curled up against me (she basically never does this). She told me she was tired but didn’t want to go to sleep; she wanted to stay with me. So I held her and snuggled her for about 10 minutes and then convinced her to try climbing in to bed again.
Instead of lying down and getting ready to fall asleep she started saying that she was hungry–really hungry. I was skeptical as she had eaten quite a large dinner less than an hour earlier so I convinced her to try to fall asleep and I’d check on her in a few minutes. When I tried to leave she pleaded with me to stay a few more minutes, so I did. After a minute or two she fell asleep so I got up and went out to the family room.
After 15 minutes or so I can hear her in her room sobbing. So I make my way to her room just as she’s getting out of bed and I scoop her up and ask her what’s wrong. She tells me that she’s, “Super hungry, really really really hungry.” So I agree to find her something to eat. She agrees to eat some graham crackers and then says she’s really cold. So I bundle her up in a blanket on the couch with her graham crackers and sit with her while she barely nibbles on them.
I ask her if she’s feeling alright and she says something like, “I feel sad.” And then she asks where Jess is. I told her Jess was trying to get Corinne to sleep. Then she broke my heart: “Why does Corinne get all the attention? I know it’s hard work getting Corinne to sleep, but I want to see Momma too.” Or something pretty close to that.
I told her we could wait until Jess came back out and have Jess take her back to bed when she was ready. So we sat on the couch wrapped up in a blanket while she nibbled on graham crackers waiting to get some attention from Momma. It was so sad. Poor girl.