Since Annelise was about two months old, she has slept through the night. Give or take a bad night here or there, when we are at home and she is in her routine, she sleeps. I am very blessed and thankful for that. Even with the transition from the crib to the toddler bed, and then from the toddler bed to her big girl bed, she stayed the course.
With as much of a blessing as this is, it means that mommy and daddy are pretty used to sleep as well. Since she is three years old now, our bodies have adjusted out of the sleep deprivation stage, and we now require a full night’s sleep again. I am out of practice for being woken up in the middle of the night.
So when Annelise was waking up in the middle of the night with nightmares, telling me there were monsters in her room, we had a problem.
On night three, around two in the morning when she showed up in our room again, hubby mumbled something about how he may or may not have watched something on TV when she was in the room. I am guessing the light bulb went off when the TV show plot sounded like the nightmare she was describing. After shrugging off all of the really ugly things I wanted to say to him because I was too tired, I got up and marched her back to bed. Clearly rationalizing with her that there were no monsters, pirates, snakes or bad guys in her room was not working. I knew this was not good and something had to be done.
On night four, I had dinner with a group of mom friends. When I mentioned the new sleep situation unfolding in my house nightly, a mom told me the most ingenious idea. She said simply, you need some Monster Spray.
Monster Spray is the best stuff ever! No, I didn’t need to hit up a 24 Walgreens on the way home from dinner, because I already had Monster Spray in my house and didn’t even know it. Monster Spray as moms know it is a simple can of Febreze.
All I did was slap a label on the bottle and I instantly had a full bottle to provide a sense of security. That night when I tucked her in, I instructed her to tell me where the monsters and krewe normally appear and I sprayed the Monster Spray.
I told her that she had to stay in bed for it to work. And she did. She slept all night long. And she has since then. I keep the Monster Spray with the cleaners in my house, always on standby in case we need to pull it out again.
Who knew that a few sprays of Febreze would get us a full night’s sleep!
So if you have monsters, pirates, snakes, or bad guys keeping your little one up at night my gift to you is Monster Spray. All you need to do is print the attached label, attach it to a standard size aluminum Febreze can and then read the instructions to your child.
Great idea!! My daughter is always saying Cookie Monster is chasing her. Ha ha! I’ll have to try it.
Linzy, this is cute! We were invited to a “monster themed” birthday party last month (which my kids LOVE birthday parties) but Cooper insisted he did not want to go because he would be to scared. We haven’t had any issues with needing the monster spray yet, but now I know what to do if we encounter this problem.
Ingenious! Love this idea and the printable.