Even though most of her friends have done the sleepover thing, Catie has never asked to. The kid likes her own bed, and she seems to know it’s a good idea to stay there. Every time we’ve talked about sleepovers, I’ve reminded her that she can go when she’s ready–and that means not calling us to get her at 2 AM.
Plus, fatigue brings out her neurosis.
She understands that other families might not be cool with twenty-two goodnight hugs and speculating about alligators sleeping in her closet. Or, and this is her especially effective stalling tactic….”Oh! Mommy! I forgot to tell you something important!” right as I’m leaving the room.
EVERY TIME I go back in…just in case this is the time she says, “All my friends smoke in the bathroom at recess.” And she wants to have a long talk about it. And in the morning she will have forgotten about it unless I ask her EVERY TIME, “what? what’s so important?”
Of course, she never says that. She always says, “I forgot to tell you that my teacher said my reading log is due next month.”
Again, these neurosis are as much a part of her goodnight routine as brushing her teeth and rearranging her covers 2,000 times.
But, with our busy day yesterday of camp for Nate, the first day of swimming lessons, and remembering to actually buy a birthday gift for the party host, Catie forgot to obsess about sleeping away from us.
Before we knew it, it was party time and I was shooing Catie out the door to the slumber party (two doors down at our sweet neighbors’ house). And she was throwing a nightgown and bathing suit in an old purse of mine waiting in the Goodwill pile.
And…she did great!
I mean, she stayed up way too late for a kid who has to be at camp all day today, but she made it through the night. No 2 AM call about wanting to come home.
M and I didn’t do quite as well. I called my friend, the host’s mom, at about nine to see if Catie needed her forgotten toothbrush.
And M, waiting for the inevitable 2 AM call, couldn’t sleep all night.
Which means that Catie may be ready for sleepovers.
But M and I still need to learn how to handle our late-night neurosis.
