I’ll admit we aren’t quite as set in our ways when it comes to rules, consistency or proper parenting techniques with this our third child and our recent crib etiquette is proof positive she will either be well rounded and unfazed by life’s hiccups or, she’ll be a total screw up and it’ll be entirely our fault.

Exhibit A—putting a piggy bank in her crib.

We have been praising Chloe anytime she makes sense of a word and uses it to convey some useful meaning. This helps with the basic parent-tot communication which went from absolutely clueless to, “OH MY GOD I THINK THE BABY WANTS AN APPLE!” A high-fiving party that has lasted a couple of months but I haven’t had the heart to turn her down when she clearly points to a book on her shelf, says, “book” as in, “Buttercup, fetch me that book” at which time, I hand it to her and she settles into her nest of blankets to flip through pages upside down. Until I find the hard, board book nuzzled under her neck and I quietly remove it, replace it on the shelf allowing her to sleep soundly while the Very Hungry Caterpillar who was dangerously close to boring a hole through her earlobe gnaws instead on the trinkets quivering on her dresser.

I’m not proud of this confession but I have allowed her to sleep with several books, pillows, her eight year old sisters’ fancy, party dress, various winter hats, finger puppets and most recently, her piggy bank. I don’t typically allow for the entire tickle trunk all at once but I have been known to allow for two or three treasures to spend some quality time in there before putting them away.

The problem is, in addition to her vocabulary, her memory is also expanding. With precision, she’s able to tell me, “Hanna, bath, ouch” from the evening before, referencing Hanna pointing out a bike riding injury and this is causing me great stress.

When I remove the books, the additional blankets, the Japanese fan, the pepper mill, a large butternut squash, she wakes up pointing, screaming at them in their natural habitat knowing I did not allow the slumber party to run its course and at some point, like a bandit, I stole her sleeping buddies out from under her nose, the worst kind of stealing because she wasn’t able to fight back.

Some free parenting advice. If you’re insane like me, I have found great success with the following approach.

Putting things away neatly made it far too obvious I was the person removing the items from her crib and she could assign blame the second she opened her eyes after a rest. If her sisters had put the items away there would be a trail of UNO cards, cantaloupe seeds leading down the hall and that too would have been obvious.

Solution?

I place the items on the floor directly in front of her crib in a messy, disorganized, sometimes upsetting pattern allowing her to think the only person who could have tossed these items in such a way was you guessed it, her.

I’ve stood in her doorway and watched with great interest as she wakes confused, disoriented and then I giggle as the guilt sets in when she hears my approaching footsteps, scrambling to reach through the crib bars to right this terrible wrong she must have done while sleep-crawling but she can’t reach anything.

When I walk in, our eyes meet. She hesitates wondering if she should just shake her head in disgust at a mother who has stooped so low and so many times.

Instead, she smiles slyly, shrugs her shoulders and rocks back and forth as if to say, “Sorry Mommy. Look what I did. It won’t happen again.”

But it will happen again. Every nap and every night until she learns to say, “Buttercup, that’ll be all. Clean up this mess so I can get some sleep.”