restless nights, or, llama can't handle the reindeer

Llama, at the ripe old age of four (give or take), seems to be going through something of an acting-out adolescent phase.  Just in the last few weeks she's taken to rampaging around the apartment at 4am, crashing into radiators and doors, skittering across hardwood floors, jumping up onto dressers and upper closet shelves and generally wreaking havoc on our ability to sleep through the night.

Two nights in one week she sent water glasses, sadly full of water, cascading down from bedside tables.  None of us were happy about these incidents, least of all Llama, who spent the remaining pre-dawn hours howling out in the living room as we tried to go back to sleep behind the now-closed bedroom door.

It is largely because of the reindeer.  I don't even know where they came from now:  wrapped jauntily around a Christmas present, probably, from some unknown gift-giver with a heart set on revenge.

We have taken to hiding said reindeer (pictured below) at odd hours of the night, and finding them days later tucked beneath a bed pillow or curved into the folds of a cloth shopping bag.

Last night I rediscovered the reindeer after several nights of blissful undiluted sleep and thought that perhaps Llama would be able to behave even with the reindeer out and about, that perhaps she had learned a lesson.  I was of course woefully mistaken, and am regretting it now as I wait for my morning coffee to finally kick in.

Perhaps we will have to establish a strict reindeer routine along the lines of not feeding a mogwai after midnight, but much, much earlier.  This has, after all, been going on for weeks now (see below), and has got to come to an end before she or I, one or the other of us, fails to make it through the night.

September 6th, 6:45am.  Rudely awakened at five o'clock by the Llama-monster crashing around the bedroom with her reindeer toy, which was eventually confiscated and hidden away under a pillow.  Watched the sunrise pooling warmly up against the red brick buildings to the west.  Now, coffee and the NY Times.  And the Llama-monster? Curled up in a ball on her favorite orange couch pillow, snout demurely tucked under front paws, all innocent-like.