Amelia and Her Kitty

Amelia has an imaginary kitty. Simply named "Kitty," the creature showed up sometime late last summer. Kitty is pretty small, fitting conveniently in my purse and in her doll carriage.

Amelia shows off her kitty.

At first, Kitty's appearance was cute. But somewhere along the line, Kitty became a real troublemaker. Soon I was forever hearing, "Mom! Kitty's messing with my stuff!" "Mom! Kitty's throwing food on the floor!" "Mom! Kitty's not listening!"

Apparently Kitty is here to test all the rules. And Mom's patience.

I need one more thing to manage and discipline in this house like a hole in the head.

For a while, we tolerated Kitty. We'd tell her "No," when she misbehaved and even put her in time out or send her to Amelia's room. Then we started to tell Amelia that it was her job to take care of Kitty and give her time outs if she wasn't behaving nicely. That worked for a while.

But now, Kitty has started to be a problem at night. And nights are hard enough around here without imaginary problems!

Kitty will "wear costumes" and scare Amelia. She'll take her blankie or paci or hog the pillow so Amelia can't sleep. Often this ends in Amelia crying for Daddy or me to come. UGH.

Last night I was looking forward to finally, after a week of walking the floors or driving all night with Alex, a night's sleep. Allie and Jeff were on duty, and I was in bed at 9:30 p.m.

Then Amelia started to cry. Daddy was already up with Alex, so I got up to see what Amelia needed. I don't remember the details, but I removed Kitty from the room. (Remember, this cat is imaginary. And I know that's great developmentally, but I still hate this cat.)

Pretty soon Amelia was yelling again. Kitty had snuck back in and was keeping Amelia awake. I told Amelia that Kitty probably wanted to sleep with her and she and Kitty should just snuggle up together and close their eyes.

The third time I got up, I'd really had it with Kitty. So when Amelia said that Kitty was scaring her, I snapped.

"Amelia," I said. "If Kitty can't learn to behave, then I'm going to put her in a box and mail her to Grandma."

Amelia looked at me wide-eyed. Perhaps she was worried this "be good or get mailed" gig could apply to her, too? Regardless of the trauma that was evident on my child's face, I plowed ahead. In my defense, I'm working on minimal sleep here.

"We keep trying to teach Kitty to behave, but she never does and if she can't be good, then she can't stay here anymore. If she does anything else tonight, I'm going to send her to Grandma in the morning."

Amelia told me she would help Kitty be good, and that was the end of it for now.

But I'm getting a box ready for mailing, just in case.