I am reminded why Brae is an only child

You know, there are actually moments when I'm snuggling on the couch with Brae and he's twirling his tiny fingers around my hair and kissing me on the cheek, when I think you know, this kid thing is pretty cool. I could get me a few more of these and snuggle on them the all time.

And then there are nights like last night that SNAP me back into this child rearing reality.

I should preface this by saying that Brae was an excellent sleeper. He slept through the night at about 5 months and always went to bed right on time without so much as a peep. His father and I were all, "Hey, we crafted an excellent baby. Look at him sleeping all peaceful like. What are people bitching about all the time? This is cake!"

Fast forward to present day, where I'm now in charge of wrangling a nocturnal toddler into a bed that we share (because you know, that toddler bed that's two feet away from us is much, much too far and you never know what could happen if Brae would roll over in the night and not bump into warm flesh. That is just too much for his sensitive composure to handle, TOO MUCH!.)

So yes, he puts up a fight every night. We have practiced this little scenario time and time again so that we have a nice little script running:

"Hey bud, its time to get in bed, do you have to pee-pee?"

"I'm not sleepy, I want to stay up with yooooooooou"

"Well sorry, but it's bed time, so c'mere and lets tuck you in."

"I SAID IM NOT SLEEPY! NO MOM, NOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

"HEY! YOU WANNA GO IN TIME OUT AND THEN GO TO BED?!!"

"Nooooooooooooooo............"

"Goodnight baby, I love you."

"Mommy?"

"Yes, pickle?"

"I gots to go potty......"

So this is our script that we run off of every night. And if it's not the potty, it's a glass of water, or another stuffed animal, or some crackers, or a pony, a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 and a Playboy.

This kid is insufferable.

Last night was the same drill, except that this particular night, ooh, I was in for an ADDED BONUS of a 1 am wake-up call in which Brae sat straight up in bed, declared that he was ready to get up and "mommy whyyyyyy do we have to sleep when we are not tired?"

"Because if you don't sleep so mommy can sleep she is going to get up in the morning and make a breakfast smoothie of all your crayons and colored pencils and then serve it to you with a side of stuffed animal omelet."

So I lay there and listened to him gabble on and on about how tired he was NOT, until the Lord intervened and he collapsed onto his pillow exhausted.

This morning I woke the kid up. He rubbed his eyes, heaved a heavy sigh and said,

"Mommy, I'm just SO sleepy."

I threw my slipper at him.