A More Efficient System
Jonas has been sleeping with us occasionally at night. He’s three and a quarter and has chronic ear infections and asthma and he mostly only does it when he’s really in pain or having trouble breathing, so I have a hard time shutting it down.
Usually my first indication that he’s going to be bunking in with us is when I’m jolted out of a dead sleep by three blankies to the face at 2 AM. I blink for a second and grope the nightstand for my glasses and get them situated on my face in time to see him padding back out into the hallway light to make the second trip. This will happen at least 3 more times before he snuggles in beside me to kick me in the kidneys for the duration of the night. You see, he has 13 ‘favorite’ blankies PLUS his Pillow Pet to bring in and he can’t carry them all at once. He used to sleep with a sofa cushion as a pillow but then my sister saw it and made fun of the fact that we didn’t even have a real pillow for him (he’s child 3, you have to remember) so we got him a Pillow Pet. I don’t see how it’s any different, but whatever.
Two nights ago, however, he apparently decided this was an inefficient system. Instead a fuzzy dolphin blanket to the face, I was wrenched from sleep by the din of a three foot tall person dragging a two foot tall rolling suitcase behind him and banging it into walls as he tried to wrestle it into our bedroom. Yes, my three year old woke up at 2 AM and went into the guest room next to his bedroom. He opened the closet where we keep the empty suitcases. He pulled out his father’s favorite small rolling suitcase and dragged it back into his room. He unzipped the suitcase, packed all of his blankies and his Pillow Pet into it, zipped it up tight and rolled it into our room. Because it was apparently ridiculous to make three trips just to carry them all in.
By the time I got my glasses on and was out of bed trying to figure out what the hell was going on and where Jonas had a flight to at 2 AM he had the thing unzipped and was ‘unpacking’ his bedding.
He’s clearly going to rule the world some day. Or be locked in a maximum security prison. One of the two, I’m convinced.