Over the River and Through the Woods
Our Double -Grandchild Sleepover started out great yesterday, when I picked one child up in the Moonbeam Room and the other from the First Grade bus. We went right to a playground by the pond, never mind that it was 45 degrees with a 30 mph wind. Only two other grownups were there, fists jammed deep in their pockets, as their bundled-up toddlers stood stock-still looking this way and that the way toddlers will do.Mine did not stand still; rather for a full 80 minutes they raced around, climbed aboard structure after structure - even wobbled at the e dge of the icy pond as my extremities grew colder and colder.
Then? Supper, a loooong bath, several books, and then the six year old began weeping for his old bed from home, taken down last June and stored in our basement. For a minute I thought he was going to try to get us to dig it out and set it up again. But then he fell asleep, literally mid-sigh.Which acted as the cue for his little brother, just recently graduated from Cribworld, to began emerging from his room with a calm yet purposeful look, like a man heading out for his appointment at the barber shop.This went on for hours: Just when I thought I had him tucked in for good there would be this helium balloon of a head moving in the hall just below doorknob level.“My crib is boring” he lisped. So I tried him in the big bed with the special child sides. Alas this too got poor reviews. Then he said he wanted the light on. Also, his blankie smelled funny. Grandpops meanwhile had by now had been consuming sports in the living room for two hours so I finally had to say it: “It’s after 10 pal; I'm turning out the light. The little one is all yours.”I heard the two of them later on the baby monitor. Papa put him in the crib and then HE got in the bed with the child sides. “Go to sleep,” he said, just like that, and by gosh if the child didn't do that – at least until 4:40am when his little helium head appeared again at our elbow. David scooped him right up and they went straight back to to the nursery, each to his safe little sided bed. "Go to sleep," I heard once again on the monitor and took it as a massage for me, and knew nothing until the gloriously late hour of 6:55 when I woke to find this note from our darling older houseguest, just now piecing out the mechanics of the written word.
"Dear TT. I been waiting for you to wake up. I am awake, signed Dear Edward age 6
And this is just our first full day
