The party at 3am

Sleepovers.

Aren't they fun?

I am not a big fan and here's why:

1. nobody settles down to sleep no matter how much extra time you give them to talk and 'get it out of their system'

2. the younger children feel left out because the older children get to have all the fun, so you try to include everyone in the sleeping in the fort adventure. This NEVER works.

3. they stay up super late and get up super early, too excited to have their buddies with them to waste time snoozing.

4. mom and dad pay for all this fun for the rest of the day with cranky, overtired children

I have a new reason to not love sleepovers. I just discovered this one last night, or rather, this morning at 3am.

Sleeping peacefully, dreaming of a time when my home knew some peace before Hank joined us. It was a lovely dream, really.

Suddenly I was awakened by the sound of crashing and banging and stomping on the stairs.

When I heard the unmistakable sound of the jingle of dog tags, I knew at once that the dog had escaped the confines of his bathroom bedroom downstairs.

Hubby got up (and not too happily, I might add) to see what in the world was going on. He was none too pleased to discover that our eldest daughter and her friend had oddly enough woken at the exact same time and together agreed that the dog would be happier sleeping with them in her room. She was dragging the dog by the collar, and he was so disoriented and hyper and bewildered at being freed at this hour of the night that he was going totally nuts. It was like he could smell bacon in every room upstairs and had to investigate each inch carefully. He was acting beserk.

Hubby grabbed the dog's collar and (after 'gently' helping my child understand this was not a great move on her part) began forcing him back downstairs. The dog, sensing that his owner was only halfway awake, took full advantage and broke free of his grip, stumbled back up the stairs, and sped down the hall straight to the girls' room. Of course they were gleeful to have him in their room, so they tugged and heaved him up onto the bed (GROSS) and tried to get him to be still and go to sleep (this was all done in stealth mode...I was under the false impression that my husband had returned the dog to his dungeon).

You can imagine how well that went.

Five minutes later, listening to girls giggling and yelling down the hall, I went to see what was going on in there. Imagine my surprise at finding a medium-sized, chocolate brown ball of destruction hopping around on top of the girls and behaving as if he'd just escaped from an insane asylum for dogs. If you've ever wanted to see how a dog would behave on crack, this was it.

I pulled the dog off the bed (after 'gently' discussing the poor decision making that had been going on with the girls) and of course he bolted like a streak of lightning back down the hall to MY bedroom. In the darkness, I heard an "ummmpphh" kind of sound and walked in to find an extremely unhappy husband with a dog sitting on top of him.

This was not a wise move by the dog. This particular dog owner is not too keen on being awakened TWICE by a hyper dog between 3 and 4am. The sweet puppy was marched back downstairs, taken outside to do his business, and closed back in the bathroom.

I lay wide awake until about 4:30am. I used this time to try to figure out what on earth would go through my daughter's mind to convince her this was a good idea.

I never came up with anything. Except that sleepovers make ordinarily sensible children go completely nuts. They will do things they'd never typically do. They'd set free an animal who should only be freed during times of war and set loose on the enemy.

So sleepovers...not high on my list of favorites. And yet, I'm sure we'll have lots more of them because that's the kind of mama I am. All fun, all the time. Only next time the dog will be padlocked into the bathroom with no means of escape except the key which will be hidden under my pillow.