Our Dress Up Dilemma Take Two

I thought I’d fill you all in on the latest with Grace’s dress-up obsession since I last wrote about it.  After the night where we found Grace in bed complete with fairy dress, crown and wand, I told Grace I 'had to do some alterations’ to a few costumes and so I kept the dress-up basket in the living room that night just to see what she’d do.  When we did our usual check on the girls as we headed to bed, we found Grace in bed in knickers, her bathers and a beach hat!!  It was hilarious.  Once again, she was in such a deep sleep, I could easily change her back into her pyjamas.  The following night, with the dress-up basket still in the living room, Grace decided to change into her floral party dress before hitting the pillow.    It’s become a case of ‘what outfit will Grace have changed into tonight?’

One night in that same week, as I was creeping out of Sophie’s nursery having done an early morning feed, I thought I’d poke my head in to see if Grace was warm enough.  There she was sitting on her bed, ‘mid-change’ getting dressed into the fairy costume yet again.

Following on from all the advice on my last post, I’ve decided Grace can dress up all she wants during the day at home.  As I said previously, there’s only a certain window in a little girl’s life where it’s acceptable to do so.  Over the past few nights however, I’ve come to the conclusion that the issue I have is Grace getting out of bed after she’s been tucked in.

Over the past week, each night, after I’ve read her a story, had cuddles and tucked her in, she’s either done an outfit change or been creeping around the house ‘borrowing’ things to bring back into her room.  Every night she’s ‘borrowed’ the torch I keep next to my bed as well as the little light-up clock in Sophie’s room which I use to see the time during the early morning feed. 

So, how should I deal with this?  I’ve explained to Grace that once Mummy has tucked her in, she’s only allowed out of bed if she needs to go to the toilet and that if she does get out of bed, there will be a consequence.  Last night, she still hadn’t learnt and so her consequence tonight is that she must go to bed before Sophie (lately, she’s been allowed to go to bed after Sophie seeing as she is older).  I’ve told her there will be no DVD (she is normally allowed to have ten to fifteen minutes of watching one while I feed Sophie).  Tonight it will be bath, pyjamas and straight to bed.

However, I’ve been wondering about a few things:

·         Should I find some more appealing pyjamas for Grace?  I did try letting her choose which ones she wore to bed in the hope that she would be happy with her choice.  However, that night she came into the living room naked, nightie in hand announcing she needed to change into another one.  I’ve also been giving her a choice of two outfits each morning in the hope that giving her a bit more choice might help.

·         Is Grace not tired enough when it’s bedtime?  With our new night time routine, her bedtime has moved back by half an hour which I don’t want to change.  However, on most days, she is still having a very long nap after lunch and I’m not sure that’s such a good thing for an almost three year old.  Yesterday she slept from half past one until after four.  I’ve been contemplating shorting her nap in the hope she’ll be so tired at night, she’ll be asleep before she even thinks about wandering around the house.

I’d appreciate any ideas or advice anyone has on how to deal with this.  As I said, I’m not worried about the ‘dressing-up’ part (although having outfits pulled out of her wardrobe each day is beginning to drive me crazy) but what I don’t want is Grace wandering around the house in the middle of the night or early in the morning before I’m up.  Not only is it naughty, it could be dangerous.  What would you do if you were in my shoes?