To this day, I remember my first sleep over. I was six years old and it was with my then best friend. And you know, when you are a six year old girl, your best friend is with whom you want to spend every waking moment. It began as an extended play date that progressed towards the novel idea of inviting her to stay for dinner (I'd never had a friend stay for dinner before! Oh my god--what joy and excitement to have my best friend sit at the family dinner table!) and moved on to calling her parents to ask if it was all right for her to spend the night. My friend and I were besides ourselves with glee when my mother got off the phone with her mother to announce that she would indeed be sleeping over. I remember her borrowing my nightgown (I still recall that it was a pink flannel gown with an illustration of a girl and a wall and a flower and there was a quote reading "I'm No Wallflower!" which made no sense to me at the time.) and when we hunkered down on the pull-out couch in the den, it seems as if there were hours of talking and giggling. And so, my love for sleepovers began. Ah, how I adored chatting and whispering and laughing long into the night with my friends.
When I reached my late teens, I still enjoyed a good sleepover, but by then, I actually favored sleeping and was usually ready to call it a night somewhere just after 1 a.m. (you know, when Saturday Night Live was over). But in the line up of friends whose houses I would sleep on weekend nights, there was always that one friend who wanted to talk a bit too long when I just wanted to go all Samuel L. Jackson on her.
I had forgotten about those moments of frustration until a night last week when the kid spent the night in my bed for the first time.
Yes, I know this will send shocks across the mothering universe, but let me put this question to bed (pun somewhat intended) immediately: no, the kid has never slept in my bed. Here's how that shook down: When Stu and I brought the kid home from the hospital, we spent about one week with the kid sleeping in a bassinet in our bedroom. Well, let me rephrase that. We spent about a week with the kid sleeping in a bassinet in our bedroom while I made sure he was alive during five minute intervals and the rest of the time Stu and I lied in bed fitfully listening to his various snortlings and rustlings. After the first week, he was sleeping well in his swaddle and my sister advised us just to put him in the crib in his room. We did, and we've never looked back, and apparently neither has the kid.
Other than as a make shift trampoline or surface for the ever-engaging game of roly poly, the kid has expressed almost no interest in Mommy and Daddy's bed. Even during times of illness, when he's needed to sleep with someone (or more to the point, with Mommy), he's refused to sleep in our bed. And I mean flat-out refused. There is kicking and screaming and tears upon tears every time we'd carry him into our bedroom in a mere attempt to get him close to the bed. So instead, we've had to sleep on the chair in his bedroom (which is the most god-awful, bloody uncomfortable seating apparatus known to man and my behind is numb and aching within 45 minutes of holding the kid's body weight on top of me in that pit of agony IKEA calls a chair) and then the couch in the living room, which is fine, but getting a bit small for the two of us and leads only to toy-playing temptation at 3 a.m. It's not a win-win.
So last week, when the kid came down with a bronchial virus, I sat up with him in the chair for as long as my glutes could stand it and then I decided that enough was enough. I was not going to spend another minute in that chair or another night in the living room. We were going to sleep in the bed. I sent Stu to the couch and the kid and I took over the master bedroom. And wonder of wonder miracles of miracles, instead of screaming like a banshee like he has every other time we've tried to wrastle him in between our sheets, the kid was overjoyed by the prospect of sleeping in Mommy and Daddy's bed.
I was overjoyed as well and was enraptured by the notion of sleeping with my boy in my arms, snuggling the night away, reveling in our bonding experience. That is, until he turned into the sleepover buddy you just wished would go to sleep already. Allow me, if you will, to run down what occurred between 2-4:30 a.m.:
- No less than 17 sips of water from the glass I keep on my night table, after each of which he said, "Just this one, Mommy. And then I be all done."
- No less than 12 decisions to switch sides with me which entailed his sliding off of whatever side of the bed he was on and walking to the step stool we keep at the foot of the bed and climbing up into the bed, despite my insistence that we could switch sides without his getting down.
- About 14 renditions of Mr. Golden Sun, complete with requisite arm movements (Thanks for teaching the kid a Barney song, day care. Thanks a lot.).
- One request to turn off the ceiling fan, because "Mommy, it's windy in here. Please turn that off. I don't like the wind. It gets in my hair."
-About 39 requests to fix his pillows and pull up the covers so he could "sleep like a big boy."
And in between all of this, was my constant refrain, "Sweet pea, it's night night time. We need to go to sleep. If you can't go to sleep here, you'll have to go back to your bed. If you'd rather sleep in your bed with Padding Bear (Paddington Bear) and Morris (one of the Wild Things) and Ernie and Bert (self explanatory) and Blue Dog (I think this might be the dog from Blue's Clues, but I can't be sure as it's a generic stuffed animal that happens to be a blue dog, but since Blue is the only blue dog I know of and since Charlie actually named the thing Blue Dog, that's what I'm basing my assumption on), that's fine, but if you want to stay here, you need to close eyes and go to sleep."
Which was always met with an "No, I want to stay here. Okay, Mommy. Close your eyes." Oh, how I wish I could! But I was too busy keeping them open making sure he didn't roll off the bed or maintaining a conversation regarding how it was dark outside because it's night night time. Oh, so you noticed? Go to sleep!
And miraculously, 2-1/2 hours later, he did. And we didn't move or talk until Stu walked in at 7:30. And I couldn't believe how happy I was to wake up with my little goose beside me resting peacefully, without a single cough in hours.
Late Breaking Post-Post News
Color it the fickle finger of fate or a misuse of irony, but as I finished writing that post last night, the kid started crying. As usual, Stu went in and he was barely awake and settled back down in no time. An hour later, the crying began again and Stu could not console him. We believe new molars were the culprit. Regardless, I began sitting with the kid in the chair and the tears stopped and then he began to slide down off my lap.
"Where are you going?" I asked. He pointed towards the door.
"You want to go in the hallway?"
"To Mommy's bed."
Ruh roh.
Yes, I spent the night with him. Sometimes there's no other way. Amazingly he didn't utter one word between 11 p.m. and 6:45 a.m. except to request that he accompany me to the bathroom somewhere around 3 a.m. I thought I would leave him sleeping in the bed, but he caught me trying to jump ship and asked if he could come with me. So he stood quietly in the bathroom until I was finished and went right back to sleep when we returned to the bed.
I'd say it was all very sweet, and part of it was, but the morning unfolded in a disastrous fashion which makes me a bit fearful for tonight. Such is life with a toddler, right? Or maybe tonight, instead of The Rolling Stones, it will be John Lennon and it will be (Just Like) Starting Over. Or would that be "sleeping over?"
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