Parenting humor: The young and the sleepless

The young and the sleepless

Have you ever tried to prise a small plastic toy mobile phone from a sleeping child's grasp?

I did late the other night. It played a stiff burst of London Bridge Is Falling Down, not surprisingly waking up my son Jack, 4.

"What are you doing, daddy?" Jack said, glaring at me through sleepy eyes.

I knew that look well.
It was the same look my wife Katherine gives me when I come to bed late and accidentally set off the fire alarm over the stairwell.
Don't ask me how I set off the fire alarm.
It remains as much a mystery to me as how when you push the number two on the toy mobile phone it plays a digital rendition of London Bridge Is Falling Down, thus waking up your young son.

I was lucky this night on two fronts:
1. I had negotiated the stairs without the fire alarm going off, and:
2. Katherine was out of town on business which meant it was just Jack, our cat Vana and me in the house.

The bad news was that I had agreed to bunk in with Jack for the night.

I don't know why I did this.

I had turned down 235 previous requests of "Please, daddy, will you sleep with me in my bed tonight?"
I still bore the mental scars from nearly two years before when, by necessity, I had to share a room with Jack while visiting relatives, not long after he stopped wearing night nappies.

It seemed fine at the time. He had his single bed, I had mine.
But in the middle of one night he switched beds in the darkness.
First thing I knew was I had less room in my bed than I had when I started out.
The next think I knew was several hours later when I woke up feeling all wet.

UH OH, the little fellow had wet the bed!

Not HIS bed. MY bed!!

Try explaining that one to your hosts!

Thankfully, bed-wetting seems to be water under the bridge now that Jack is four.
We do have a waterproof cover on his bed just in case though.
I felt safe, however, when I tucked him into bed and finally agreed to his request that later on I would sleep in his bed with him.

What is the fascination, eh?
Jack, being an only child, has his own double room and his own double bed. Luxury.
But noooo, he wants daddy to sleep in his bed with him.

I guess it was about midnight when I finally turned in.
The first obstacle was disarming him of the mobile phone without waking him up.
Having failed that, the next task was to manoeuvre him into a position which would leave me a space to sleep in.

What kind of law of physics is it that dictates that a boy, given a double bed, will expand to use up every inch of mattress?

"Doooooon't," Jack whined as I gently tried to reposition him.

"Do you want me to sleep here or not?" I whispered angrily.

"Why don't you sleep on the floor next to me," he said.

"I'm NOT sleeping on the floor! Do you want me to go to my own bed?" I said.

"No," he said. "I want you to sleep here."

"Okay, well move over then," I said.

I have to tell you that plastic waterproofing, as practical as it is, is not particularly comfortable to sleep on.
To make matters worse, this was a hot, sticky summer's night.
Every time one of us tossed or turned, which was often, the plastic crunched underneath us.

I can also report that Jack has a very loud ticking clock on his bedroom wall.
I never noticed before that it was loud.
We bought it for Jack a while ago when he started coming into our bedroom at 6 o'clock each morning and waking us up.
We told him in no uncertain terms that the earliest he was allowed to wake us was 7 o'clock.

"But how will I know when it's 7 o'clock?" Jack complained.

Good point. So we bought him the clock and showed him where the hands had to be for it to be 7 o'clock.

I knew the clock was cheap.
I now knew it was cheap and loud.

Finally, I drifted off to sleep.

Not for long though.

Jack woke me up.

"Daddy, you're snoring," he announced.

"What!" I snorted.

"You're snoring. I can't get back to sleep," he said.
It was uncanny. Jack sounded EXACTLY like Katherine.
This is the kind of complaint I expect to hear from Katherine regularly, but I didn't know it had been genetically passed on to Jack.
A few moments earlier, there had been one person happily sleeping and one tossing and turning in the heat.
Now there were two people tossing and turning.

No, I have to correct that.

Vana had decided to join us by this time.

So there were two people - one big and one little - tossing and turning, and one black cat on the end of the bed probably wondering what all the huffing was about.

Somehow, however, we did all go to sleep.

Jack woke me up again at 6 o'clock and told me it was time to get up.

"It's only 6 o'clock," I said, glancing grumpily at the clock. "Maybe I should go to my own bed for a while and you can play in here. Was it good having me sleep in your bed, mate?"

Jack glared at me.

I knew that look.

I have seen it on Katherine's face oh so many times after she has had a fitful night's sleep.

"It was okay," he said. "But maybe you'd like to sleep in the spare room tonight, daddy?"