What goes on at night

Oliver has always been a weird little sleeper. Actually that's not true, when he was a baby and confined to a cot in his own room, we thought he was a dream, now I'm wondering if all that sleep we thought was going on ever really was.

When he shared a room with Lucy in our old house, he had the top bunk. Often he would make his way down the ladder, pull up a stool to reach the door handle and open their bedroom door in complete darkness and wander on out to us in the lounge. We never knew if he was still asleep and sleep walking of if he was actually awake but we could always settle him back down to sleep with a cuddle.

When we moved to this house, around midnight without fail we would hear little footsteps on the staircase and then Oliver would tip toe into our room, climb up into our bed, curl up in bed beside me and go back to sleep. I've never been a co-sleeping fan but I will admit that I kind of enjoyed these little night time cuddles with Olli. I justified it to myself as the weeks wore on that he was only little once and that he wouldn't be doing this as a teenager. But then, after one particularly bad night of sleep with a wriggling starfish of a 3 year old next to me, who in the wee hours of the morning wet the bed.  I decided that this little tradition had to end.

I put a little mattress swab next to our bed with a blanket and a pillow and Olli knew that if he wandered up in the middle of the night, he was to go to sleep on the mattress and not climb into our bed.This worked extremely well and for a few months without fail I would wake in the morning to see Olli snuggled up on the mattress on the floor.

But then he turned 4 and I kinda wanted our room back as an adult space without Thomas the Tank engine blankets interfering with my colour scheme. So a sticker chart went up and Oliver's goal was to spend the whole night in his room without coming upstairs.

He has been doing great. He is still always the first to wake in our house and I find myself longing for the days when I will get to wake him up by pulling his blankets off him and switching the light on. But 6am is morning after all (just) so I can't complain, and a star gets put on Olli's chart for staying in his room all night.

However, these last few nights some strange things have been happening.

Lucy and I searched everywhere in the morning for her drink bottle which her and I both knew I had put beside her bed just before switching her light off. It was found in Oliver's room by his book case. He said he got it in the night.

A packet of chocolate biscuits which was hidden in the pantry got opened. Marcus and I are on a sugar free diet, Nathan doesn't have the dexterity and Lucy was so put out that she hadn't got any which only leaves Ollie.

This morning I open our plastic draw to get out a bottle for Nathan and find this.

A bowl with a scooped out feijoa skin, complete with little knife and spoon.

When I asked around at breakfast who had put it there, Olli said 'oh yeah, that was me. I got hungry in the night.' I need to add here that Oliver isn't that dexterous either and this little exercise of cutting then scooping would have taken him the better half of 20 minutes.

Then I get a text from Marcus. He had a business meeting first thing this morning. He got into the board room, opened up his laptop and found these.

Classic! Who knows what else this little midnight elf gets up to while the rest of the house sleeps.