twist and shout

Ah me. We’ve had some visitors here at camp spud in the last few days and that means that we’ve had to turf the spud out of his room and into ours. Oh yes, the slippery slope of sleeping in the big bed has been slid right to the very bottom. 5 days of sleeping with his parents, 5 days of waking up with direct access to the power of pester and 5 days, crucially, of not having to sleep in his own bed, his prison cot out of which he cannot climb.

Interestingly, he has not attempted to climb out of the big bed at all. In fact, he has gone to sleep like a blissful little cherub with nary a chirrup of complaint, no demands for milk and no crying of poo wolf ('Mummy, Mummy, Mummy, Poo Mummy, Poo!! Poo!!' ... 'Have you done a poo, Spud?' 'Yeth!' 'Have you really?' 'Yeth, Poo!!'. No poo. 'Do you need to poo in the potty?' 'Yeth' Twenty minutes of pottering about the bathroom ignoring the potty later and it's back to bed. No poo the next time either. Or the next. Sometimes, five calls later, poo happens, but by that point we are so fed up of jumping up and down that we've closed all the adjoining doors and are eating our freezing cold dinner with our feet in a mustard bath.

This new easy bedtime is possibly only when he's put to sleep in our bed, so, now that our guests have gone, we hit upon the wizard wheeze of putting him down in our bed and then moving his sweet little sleeping self into his own bed. Which works for about two hours which is when someone from upstairs comes home and slams the door, or a car honks out in the street, or a helicopter flies over or a siren goes off. You know. And he wakes up. And realises he's been tricked. And will he go back to sleep? Will he hell. Not, you understand, in anything other than our comfy bed. Between his parents. And not under the duvet either. No no, that's just too hot.

Instead, he kicks and complains in his sleep until the duvet is crumpled up below foot level, ie, around our waists somewhere. He then stretches his little fists and once he's thumped both of us a good one he frog-legs up to the headboard where he bangs his noggin and wakes, briefly, to whinge a little. He then rolls over, trapping one arm briefly underneath him and struggling energetically to free it, ending up with his pajama-clad bottom in the air and one or both of his parents teetering on the edge of the mattress, leaving no room for an elderly and very disgusted cat.

So, yes. We are currently being beaten by the proverbial rod we have created for, you know, our own backs. And stuff. There are benefits however. To all this bed sharing and twisted musculature. Namely, once he's contorted himself into position, that's it. Lights out. No waking. No, in otherwords, getting up in the middle of the night to give him a cuddle. I'm not sure I can remember the last time I had a week of uninterrupted nights.

Perhaps we should just buy a bigger bed.