I came home from trivia tonight to find a weary Jaclyn emerging from Miles’s bedroom. “I give up,” she said. Just the thing you want to hear after ten hours of work.
Miles was in fact not interested in going to sleep, at least not in his bed. “I wanna go sleep in Mommy and Daddy’s bed!”
Hoping to resolve the situation as quickly as possible, I suggested bringing Miles to bed and watching some TV with us (we’ve been on a Simpsons holiday kick the last couple nights) so we could all decompress and relax together. Jaclyn barely had a moment to protest before Miles was darting through the house for our bedroom.
Jaclyn sighed and gave me the Look. If you are a father, you likely know the one I’m talking about.
Still, I knew the only possible chance for us to all get what something close to what we wanted* was to bring Miles to bed with us for a few minutes. By the time we entered the bedroom, Miles had already clambered into the bed and was rolling and writhing all over the place. Jaclyn immediately noticed a mark on her pillow that hadn’t been there moments earlier.
“Miles,” she said. “What is that?”
“Look!” he exclaimed, pointing at the pillows. “I got boogers!”
Well, I thought, if she wasn’t sold on this idea before, she sure as hell isn’t now.
Fortunately, our snotty, rambunctious rascal did calm down, eventually returning to his bed without further coercion and drifting off to sleep. Now if only we could figure out how to achieve that at 8:30 and with 100% less boogers…
* We wanted the following: 1) Jaclyn wanted to read in peace, 2) I wanted to see Miles, since he was awake anyway, 3) Miles wanted to avoid going to sleep at all costs.
The Perils (& Pride) of Paternity 