Sleepovers

This blog post was written last night.  Now it's Sunday morning and three children are on the couch, watching Phineas and Ferb and eating eggs, toast and honeydew melon.  The boys were sleeping by midnight and all three kids came downstairs at 7:00.  We heard Coen say, "Let's not wake them up. Let's let them sleep in."

Oh how I loved sleepovers.

Coen is having a sleepover tonight.  It is 9:57 p.m. and Tad is taking the boys outside to play in the dark because when they were getting ready for bed, they were climbing all over each other, wild with energy.

I, for one, can't wait until they go to sleep.  I want to go to sleep!

But watching them go outside, with flashlights, Mason saying on the way out, "Can we tell scary stories?" makes me fondly remember when I was young and got to go out in the dark after bedtime.  Specifically I remember the feel of grass on my bare legs, wearing one of my mom's big t-shirts for pajamas.  And the feeling of really being in on something, getting to stay up late and be outdoors.

And those sleepovers, how hard we would try to stay up all night.  Once my mom came downstairs at 4:00 in the morning and demanded that we go to sleep.  "She's turning us into owls!" I said and my friend and me rolled around in our sleeping bags, helpless with laughter.

Tad is upstairs now, with the boys, reading them a story.  We'll take turns going upstairs to ask them to be calm and quiet, try to sleep. A sleepover is a different thing when you're in charge of it, rather than just in it.  But still, the night does have a special exciting feel, something different.  I guess these crazy boys are rubbing off on me.

And I know it'll be something new entirely when Lucy is old enough and our house is full of slumber party girls instead of boys.

But for now, I'm going to talk to Tad, and look forward to coffee in the morning...one extra kid in the house.