A weight has been added...but this time it's a good thing.

At our first OT appointment, Miss Emily suggested we get a weighted blanket for BabyGirl. Bedtime was fairly involved at the time, but she would still stay in bed & go to sleep. I borrowed a quilt from Busha that my great-grandmother made. It was pretty heavy (and exactly what Miss Emily suggested), but BabyGirl hated it. She refused to sleep with it saying it was too hot. She wanted no part of any blanket that was heavy.

Since then things have disintegrated at bed time. She goes to bed well about one night a week. The rest of the time she cries and fights and complains that her bed "itches." For a while she'd go to sleep in our bed, then I'd move her when I went to sleep. She's getting bigger, so that's not as easy a task as it once was.

Two nights ago the fight lasted nearly an hour. She wanted me to take the mattress pad off my bed because it was "too soft." My mattress pad encases the entire mattress. You have to pick the mattress up and put it inside the pad & zip the pad up. Not a one man job. Not by a long shot. I spent 20 minutes explaining this to her. She refused to listen & kept yelling if I cared about her at all, I'd take it off. (Another new developement. Followed by, "Ever since I started itching I was trying to figure out if you really love me. Now I know you don't." Oy.)

Eventually I turned off the TV and all the lights, sat in my recliner & rocked Bitsy until they both gave up & went to sleep. BabyGirl spent the first 10 minutes of this endeavor telling me that if I didn't turn on the lights she was never going to sleep & she'd never let me sleep either. This approach does not work on so many levels!

When I made her fidgets bowl last week, she discovered she loves the weight of the beans on her hands. I asked her then if she wanted a "bean blanket" and she said yes. I've been trying to work out how to make one all week because I don't want to spend $89-$150 on something just to find out she won't use it.

Yesterday I let her pick out an old softly worn sheet from the linen cabinet (secretly afraid she'd pick my favorite Wamsuttas from when I was little). Luckily it had a printed grid on it, so that cut my work in half.

I cut the twin sized sheet down and sewed it together to make a giant pocket. Then I sewed channels in it & started filling them with dried pinto beans. After each scoop of beans, I'd sew across the length of the blanket making pockets to keep the beans from shifting too much.

In the end we have a bean quilt. I ran out of beans just over half way through, but it's big enough to cover most of her body if she lays on her side with her legs bent (that's how she falls asleep anyway, so it's not a huge issue).

The next time I go to town, I'll pick up another 5 lbs of beans & finish it off. But until then, it seems to be working. She went to bed with no problems & never once complained that the sheets "itched." I'm not hanging my hope on this blanket with only good night, but I am hoping for the best.

Now, this might seem a bit odd to some of you, but I really feel I need to share. This is a huge step of faith for me...I'd normally keep something like this to myself. After I finished the blanket (or at least as much as I could), I anointed it with oil & prayed over it. Please don't think I'm a lunatic. I do not believe the blanket now has special spiritual powers. This is also not something I do a lot. But I do believe the Lord can use it to bless my daughter, and I also believe He led me to do this. My prayer was mostly a blessing for BabyGirl, but this is the way I felt the blessing should be imparted on her.

I went in her room & took the blanket off her before I turned in for the night (actually I took it & laid it across my lap for about 15 minutes...after I used one of her old brushes on myself. Miss Emily suggested I try some of the techniques to help with my issues). At 2:30 this morning she came in & woke me up wanting the blanket back on. Then this morning when I brushed her (I usually brush her to wake her up, then let her rest in bed until her breakfast is ready) and she wanted it back on again.

I pray this continues to comfort her and give her the peace & calming she needs to sleep each night.