Bedfellows

This morning, Metro made the announcement that there was potential for bad stormy weather this afternoon, so they cancelled school. Since I am no longer a teacher, this had little effect on me. Except for the fact that since the public schools were cancelled, so was the day care that the Es go to (Lindley's school stayed on schedule, a fact that did not sit well with her, once she found out later this evening). Mathieu had a doctor's appointment this morning, so I got to spend some Es time with them at their house (Maribeth was working).

Anyhow, still waiting for this supposedly bad weather, once the parents of the Es got home, I headed back to my house, supposedly to batten down the hatches. I am not making light of bad weather. I have seen on the tv the recent damage that storms have been doing. And when any kind of weather is predicted, I pay close attention to the radar. As I did today. Waiting for the weather. Which never really came through. Welcome to Nashville. But I digress.

This evening, Maribeth was staging one of her "Montana" meetings at the Doik. She and Mathieu and the Es and Sam and Lindley and Steve are going to Yellowstone/Montana/somewhere out there later this summer. No, I am not going. But they are, and they have meetings about once a month to get the details ironed out. Once the meeting was over, Maribeth and Mathieu left to go to dinner with other parents of children in Everley's class. They were going to be out late, so Everley and Emmatha were going to spend the night at my house (but don't tell Lindley, who was already unhappy that Everley had today off and would be livid if she knew Everley and Emmatha were spending the night).

Anyhow, after Everley and Lindley had a playtime/wreck the bathroom/bath, Sam and Lindley headed home. After some play time, I decided that perhaps it was time to see if Emmatha was ready for bed, my plan being to give her a bottle and put her to sleep in the porta crib. So, I gave her a bottle, we rocked a few minutes, and Emmatha decided that it was time to play some more. Yippee (LaLa was getting tired!). I knew Everley would need some time to settle down before she got sleepy, so I suggested she go watch tv in my room in my bed, which she did.

Meanwhile, Emmatha (aka Danger Baby) was spending her time, biting inflated balloons, climbing on chairs, standing on rocking chairs, and find microscopic who-knows-what to put in her mouth. Steve was on Emmatha duty, so after I cleaned the kitchen, I suggested he go watch tv with Everley and I would take over Emmatha duty.

By the way, we're still waiting for the weather to come through.

Anyhow, after some more play time, Emmatha starts rubbing her eyes, I take this as a positive sign that perhaps it was time for another go at going to sleep, so I fixed another bottle and we head into the dark living room for some more bottle time and rocking. This time, after a longer rocking time, Emmatha finally decided to go to sleep. However, she was not a fan of being put in the porta-crib. So we go back and rock some more. And she still rejected the porta-crib a second time. Now for a bit of explanation - the porta crib is in the bedroom we call "GDizzle's Room" because it's the room he sleeps in when he comes up. The bed is a full size bed, that gets smaller every time I sleep in it. I sleep in a king bed, and the bed in the Animal Kingdom Guest Room is also a king. My thought was that I would sleep with the girls there (it's upstairs), but the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to be trucking up and down the stairs in case Emmatha needed another bottle in the middle of the night.

Approaching weather

So, when Emmatha is asleep again, I put her down in the middle of the full size bed and she stays asleep. I do realize that she is possibly 30 seconds from crawling off the bed if she wakes up, so I know I am on a limited time span. I first go to the potty, because it felt like the Rockettes were dancing on my kidneys by this time, and who knows when I would have a chance to go potty in the next 12 hours and I didn't want a kidney explosion. I also got on my pjs and then headed to my bedroom to talk to Everley and PawPaw, who had been talking nonstop for the last 30 minutes about the weather (well, Everley was talking nonstop). I knew that if Everley stayed in the bed with PawPaw, they might be talking forever, not to mention the fact that sometimes Everley has night terrors and sometimes she likes to sleep diagonal. Steve is headed to Columbus tomorrow to spend the weekend with GDizzle and needs his sleep, so I ask Everley if she wants to come sleep with Emmatha and me, and she agrees.

So, we go and get in the bed with Everley on one side and me on the other and Emmatha in the middle. I put a suitcase holder with a pillow on Everley's side because I didn't want her falling off (usually if we sleep in here, there are only two of us in the bed - the third person makes things a bit more crowded). Eventually Everley goes to sleep. I am still awake because (a) I am waiting for the severe weather to hit and I want to make sure I can get everyone to the safe place in the house, and (b) I am sleeping on the very edge of the bed. And the Rockettes who have been taking a break have decided to start tap dancing on my kidneys again. Which means I have to decide if I should go ahead and go potty now or wait until later, which means one or both girls may be awake. I decide that since they are both asleep, I'll make a run for it and go potty again.

At some point, I hear rain and brace my self for the high winds, hail, and hard rain. Thirty seconds later, the light splatter of rain stops and the bad weather has passed. Since I am awake, I read the email from the day care director apologizing for following Metro's school closing.

Meanwhile, Emmatha has decided to start her nocturnal activities. She does not wake - which is a good thing, I guess. No, fully asleep, she decided to roll and wander about the bed, sometimes crawling on top of/beside Everley, and sometimes crawling on top of/beside me. When she enters Everley's space, I cringe thinking she will wake Everley up, but she doesn't. I also cringe thinking Everley's sporadic coughing will wake Emmatha up, but she doesn't. Unless you count rolling about in bed as waking up.


Meanwhile, back to the bed. Not only is it a full size bed (meaning small), it is also an old cast iron bed that used to reside in my grandmother's house. The headboard and footboard have rods in them with spaces in between the rods which are fully large enough for Emmatha to put her head in. As I said, the bed is cast iron, which will also be absolutely wonderful if Emmatha decides in her rolling about to bang her head on - which means waking up. So, I spend the next hour or so, pulling Emmatha off Everley and then down to the center of the bed, away from the dreaded headboard. Oh, and then there's the finding of the pacifier in the pitch black dark when Emmatha either decides to (a) let it fall away from her mouth, or (b) spit it out in defiance so I will have to fumble about trying to (a) find the pacifier and then (b) find the hole that is her mouth to jam the pacifier back in.

At some point, Maggie Cat decided to join the fun. She decided not to show her face mainly because to take a photo in the pitch black dark, the light comes on and she's not a fan. She stayed long enough to find a spot wedged up against my legs, while Emmatha was wedged up against my body. She did leave once the bad weather sprinkles started.

At some point, in her sleep, perhaps due to some dream she was having, Emmatha decided that she needed some skin to skin contact, and ended up on my face. which meant at least I could move away from the edge since there was more room available in the middle of the bed.

At some point, all the predicted bad weather passed us by and everyone was asleep and out of danger in the bed. At some point way early in the morning, I realized Steve and gotten up to fix his coffee, so Emmatha and I headed to my bed, where plenty of room was available for us both. And so we caught some zzzzzzs.

I'm very blessed to have the opportunity to have the girls sleep over. It's just an extra blessing when we we all have room to spread out!!

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Blessings today include: Morning babysitting the Es at their house; Maribeth bringing Whitts for lunch; spaghetti dinner with most of the family; Emmatha, Everley, and Lindley time; Maribeth's plan for my 48 state trip