I thought it was funny that so many people mentioned Monster Spray in last night's post because I actually stood in a store a few days ago, clutching a bottle of Febreze, and figuring out whether or not I thought Monster Spray would work with Alexis. As I meandered down the mental path envisioning how that would go, I thought of her waking in the middle of the night, crying until she found the spray, and the realized something--she doesn't stay in her own bed. I knew I would be the one stomping around in the middle of the night to seek out spray to scare away that which isn't there in the first place.

No, thank you.

Instead I decided the best thing for us to try was to twist the monsters into being happy little creatures that are our friends. And what better way to make new friends than to throw a party, right? So that's what we did--we threw a Monster Party.

Alexis and I kicked off the festivities by baking cupcakes together and then decorating them to be goofy little monsters. I quickly learned that whipped cream flavored frosting is not a decorators friend, so the monsters turned out far more scary than silly, but in a Craftastrophe sort of way.

As we were ruining perfectly good cupcakes, we turned on Monsters, Inc. I want to hug that little girl Boo for laughing at the monsters all the way through the movie, because Alexis quickly started to think the monsters were funny, too. We hadn't watched the movie for a long time, but this time Alexis thought it was freakin' hysterical. She had tears rolling down her chubby little cheeks at one point because she was laughing so hard.

After the movie it was time for bed, so we read a couple of monster books. After the books came the moment of truth--time to turn out the lights. Alexis made a big production out of there being a monster under her bed, so together we got down low and looked for it. She didn't see it under the bed, but then suggested it was under the rug. I pretended to scoop it up, gave the tiny little beast a hug and a kiss, then started laughing and acting like the silly monster was dancing. (I really deserve an Academy Award for my performance, btw.) After that moment of genius, I asked Alexis if she wanted to give the monster a kiss, too, and she did before busting up laughing because the monster was, as she put it, "tooting."

Fart jokes just never stop being funny when you're two, I guess.

Anyway, after that we tossed the monster in the aquarium and sent Elmo swimming with the worms. Apparently the worms did a good job of keeping the monster under control because Alexis not only slept peacefully all night, she did it in her own bed. All night.

It was beautiful.

I don't know how long the affects of the Monster Party will last, but I do know that the very first thing Alexis did when she got in her room tonight was to gleefully scream, "Hi, silly monster!"

I'm sure that roughly translates to, "Dude. I need a new excuse for not sleeping through the night 'cuz that monster gig is up. Any ideas?"