Mr. Sandman... Get out of My Bed!

Last weekend I headed south with the kids for a little tax season sunshine.  I had big plans.  Good ones, too.  Plans that did not include spending night after night alternating between "The Neck Scarf" and "The Roundhouse Kick."

You'd think that, by the time they are four years old, your kids would know how to sleep without flopping around like dying fish, but no... Even without my husband here to take up half of the bed I still spent three nights with Matthew's feet in my face.

Leah was the first to start with in with a fever, but Matthew held onto it the longest.  After three days of his being glued to my lap with a temperature somewhere between 100.5 and 103.9 (thank you, ear infection),  Leah finally pouted, "Mommy, you like Matthew more than you like me!"

Thankfully his fever finally broke for good last night in the middle of one of his pre-dawn snow angels, and he's been happy as a clam ever since.  We even ventured to the sand dunes today, right after Michael came inside to tell me, "Mom, I accidentally kicked my flip-flop up on the roof."  I almost left it up there just to teach him a lesson (this is not the first flip-flop he has flipped out of reach) but then I remembered that Barbie doll my brother tossed up on the roof when we were kids and how her hair melted, and besides, I didn't want to come home from the sand dunes with tennis shoes full of sand, so we got the ladder out and rescued the flip flop.

A bit later at dinner, one of Michael's cousins accidentally knocked over a water bottle and spilled the entire thing in Michael's lap.  This meant he had the choice between being wet or wearing his five-year-old cousin, Lily's, spare stretch pants for our adventures at the sand dunes.  I initially counted his decision to choose comfort over coolness as a bonus, since these pants didn't have any pockets on them to hold extra sand.  But, then we came home and he understood "Go take a shower" to mean, "Climb in Mom's bed, fully dressed.  And make sure you're under the covers."

Seriously.  After doing this --

-- he was wearing his sand-covered stretch pants UNDERNEATH my covers.  Not to mention the fact that his hair -- which was so full of sand it will be red until 2029 -- was resting comfortably on my pile of freshly laundered clothes.  Apparently, the universe was playing the Telephone Game when she registered her 1950's song lyrics.  The line is "Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream" not "climb into my bed and make sure to leave enough sand for a midnight sand castle."

Ah, well...  At least tonight I won't have anyone's feet in my face.