At night

Let's see if I can explain what I think is an interesting story about Madeline waking up in the middle of the night.

The background story:
Over the last month (at least) we have been working to get Madeline to be less dependent on other people to go to bed and stay in bed the whole night. I've definitely backed off from my originally very ideal thoughts about this, but we are chipping away. Madeline is doing a much better job of falling asleep on her own. However, she continues to wake up at least once a night on most nights, usually around 3am or so and then every hour or two after that until about 7:30am. Some nights she will agree to go back to her own bed, some nights Dad will go sleep in her room with her (since Mom can't really do that at this time or in the near future), or she will come sleep in our bed...it just depends on what is bothering her when she wakes up and how tired Mom and Dad are that night. This journey through toddler night waking has also come at the same time as Madeline has reached another level of awareness of things around her and has become scared of lots of random things. For example, we were at the park and a Monkey Joe's mascot (giant purple monkey) came to hand out freebies. Madeline was intrigued and then it turned into being scared of the monkey. That was about a month ago, but she often talks about being scared of the monkey. Now on to the story about the other night...

Part of our bedtime routine is to Madeline's baby dolly to bed in a baby doll bed that Nana & G-man repainted for Madeline's birthday and that Madeline now has in her bedroom. However, the other night I forgot to complete that routine because during the day Madeline had been playing with the baby doll bed by putting many items from her room into the bed, including a regulation size football. When Madeline woke up in the middle of the night, she went to the baby doll bed to get the baby doll and bring it into bed with her. However, she (not realizing it at that time) grabbed the football instead and took it back to bed with her. She then woke up about 30 minutes later and was scared and complaining of the "monkey on her pillow" (aka - the football) and refused to return to her bed. In my partially awake state, I didn't understand the whole story until the morning, at which time it seemed like an interesting story to me, and I hope it was somewhat interesting and maybe a little humorous for you too!