And Then I Stepped in Gum . . .

Another Milestone Passed

We have survived our first hosted sleepover. I have only one question about the whole ordeal -- what on earth were we thinking? (In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that Dave would probably strenuously object to the use of the term "we" there. In fact, at one point, he half-jokingly accused me of orchestrating the whole thing in order to get him to see the merits of a vasectomy.)

It actually didn't go too badly, all things considered. The terrors -- I mean, girls -- behaved most of the time. It's just that for an event with the world "sleep" in its name, not too terribly much of that happened. Of course, we let them stay up late to start with, so the girls, who are 5 and who both have 8:00 bedtimes, didn't even get put to bed until about 9:30, and that was because they were saying they were tired. They had made their own pizzas, watched The Lion King 1 1/2, made foam treasure boxes, eaten grapes, and played some kind of made-up game about a unicorn-pegasus who uses magic on Nemo and teaches him to fly. So they'd crammed a lot in. I read them a story and we sang our songs. And then the fun began.

We had them sleeping on the pullout sofa in the living room -- Katie's choice. Dave and I went downstairs to watch some TV. They came down every 10 minutes, I kid you not, from 9:30 until 11:30. Excuses ranged from not being able to sleep because of car headlights through the window to sleeping bags being uncomfortable to Karina missing her family. And of course, at 10:30 they were hungry and thirsty (they got water, no food -- mean mom!). We had two phone calls to Karina's mom. At 11:30, Karina was crying and saying she wanted to go home, but the phone call convinced her to stay. Since the living room was a complete no-go, and I had hopes that if I secluded them well enough in a dark place, they might sleep late in the morning, we instituted a change of venue. Katie threw a fit at the idea of sleeping in her room (too mundane? I don't know), so we put them in her tent in the basement. We got them all situated, and told them they needed to sleep.

Much loud talking and giggling ensued. Threats were communicated. Katie came to our room three more times. I think they finally fell asleep around 12:30. And then they were up at 6:30. Argh! So Katie, who usually gets 10-11 hours of sleep, got 6. Needless to say, she was Miss Fun this morning. About half an hour of sobbing and being sent to her room for various reasons. But she finally perked up a little, and the girls had pancakes and bacon for breakfast, played outside, and did one more craft (sun-paint on bandanas, that only worked marginally well -- and I only had to break up one catfight over the paintbrush). Then Karina's dad came, and Katie cried that Karina had to leave. Then she slept for 2 hours. Not quite enough to make up for it, but them's the breaks.

Now we're off to Ikea for their "super summer sale." And the dangerous thing is that we've just realized we have access to a truck next week, so we could buy things to bring home and pick them up later, no matter how big they are. Yikes!

posted by Jennifer Morgan, at 1:58 PM