New Year’s Eve Slumber Party

Here it is, New Year’s Eve. I’m a 43 year old working mother of young kids. My idea of a New Year’s Eve party?

A slumber party. And not the kind where a bunch of giggling girls huddle in sleeping bags watching scary movies and making prank calls. I’m talking: everyone in the house actually goes to sleep.

It’s almost 10 p.m. and both my kids are still awake. Hubby is away. (Poor Hubby, in Miami with the team for New Year’s. Shed a tear.)

Usually when he’s away, I push our bed against the wall, and me and the kids will read bedtime stories there. Typically, one or the other or both will fall asleep there. Often, I fall asleep with them as well.

Tonight, we had a particularly delicious Chinese food feast over at Nana’s, as well as candy canes, oreos and fortune cookies… the stuff of holidays and visitors and parental distraction.

Now, both kids are fairly wired. Overtired, over sugared, and crazy silly.

I pushed the bed against the wall, we did the bedtime routine, read a few stories, but they cannot settle. I picked quiet, calm bedtime books. To no avail. They squirmed and kicked and poked each other and started fighting and then laughing and weren’t listening to me at all…

I banished both kids to their own beds.

They sobbed. They begged.

I let them back.

They got silly again.

I banished them again.

They sobbed, they begged:

I’m scared all alone in my room!

Where’s Daddy? I miss Daddy!

It’s scary without Daddy here!

Me too! I’m scared!

Mommy you have to let us sleep in your room! 

Mommy pleeeeease please please please can we sleep in your room?

We’ll be good this time, we promise!

Ugh.

So I’ve let them back one last time. I’ve got my laptop, and they have strict instructions not to make a peep while I’m writing. I’ve turned the lights out as I work. They’re both watching me type, Babyboy propped up on a big stuffed animal against the wall, and Babygirl with her head on my left arm. They’re mesmerized by the glow of the screen, and hypnotized by the tap-tap-tapping of the keys.

I can sense that they’re finally getting very sleepy…

And I know that I’m getting very sleepy.

It was my day off, but since Hubby had to leave mid-morning, I got up at 6 a.m. and went to the gym, then ran errands before swinging back home and picking up the kids to go to the animal shelter. The census is low, one cat and one rabbit; we skipped the chickens and let the rabbit have all the lettuce and carrots we brought. Then we rushed to the barber’s where both kids got dramatic haircuts. Then we traipsed next door to the neighborhood diner, and both kids ordered blueberry pancakes for an early lunch. They played outside at Nana’s for awhile, plenty of cold, fresh air…

Ah. There we go. Both kids are now fast asleep. All I had to do was keep typing.

I’ll be asleep too, soon.

It’s shaping up to be a really great New Year’s Eve slumber party!