The Night Before

I have been meaning to write about this night for awhile now. What night am I talking about? I am talking about the night before we flew from Oklahoma to New Jersey. The night we spent in a hotel in OKC (Oklahoma City). The night I had to share a bed with Zeke. You know, that night.

It started out well enough. We walked across a very busy street to IHOP for dinner. The boys were pretty well behaved. Well, Deacon was fine once food was put in front of him. Zeke got a little rowdy after a bit, but he kept it pretty well in check once I shared my juice with him. Then we walked back to the hotel and then the fun started.

Upon arriving in the hotel, we got the boys ready for bed. The hotel had given us a pack-n-play for Deacon, but since they only had one pnp, Zeke had to sleep in a bed. We opened the wardrobe door to sort of block him off from the rest of the room, and for the most part, it worked pretty well. It was somewhere between 6:30 and 7:00pm.

As we put Deacon in bed, Josh laid down on one of the two double beds in the room and said, "I don't feel good anymore" and was done for the night. This left me to deal with Zeke and his first night sleeping in a bed that didn't have a way of "restraining" him, also his first night (since he was a month old) sleeping in a bed with me. Let me just say, it was an interesting experience.

We started off watching some tv, as I hoped that if he was lying down watching it, he'd eventually drift off and all would good. Yeah, not so much. Zeke spent probably the first half hour jumping around the bed, moving pillows, figuring out the bed and such. FINALLY, around 8:30 I turned off the tv, laid him down AGAIN and he was just about to nod completely off to sleep when Deacon started crying in his sleep and woke everyone up. Great.

So, I got up, soothed Deacon, put him back to bed, collected Zeke from Josh, and started the process all over. This time around I put on the Olympics for Zeke to watch. It was men's gymnastics. I figured, "How exciting could gymnastics be for a two year old?" How exciting indeed. After the first guy we watched had finished his rings routine the camera panned to his parents who were cheering and jumping around. In the spirit of the evening, Zeke jumped up on the bed and started cheering. Okay. So the next guy comes out and does his high bar routine. As he does his routine, as he flips around and around around and he flips around and around and around, Zeke started counting his flips. Zeke got all the way to twelve then kind of ran out of numbers so he started making them up. And of course, he cheered when it was over. Mayhaps I have a future gymnast on my hand? Anyhoo. After this kid does his high bar routine, another guy comes out and does his pommel horse routine. Again, Zeke counted the one move. However, as the guy did the move where he keeps his legs together and swings them around Zeke provided his own commentary. "Wee! Wee! Wee!" Zeke said every time the kid swung his legs around. It was very sweet. It was also making it evident that men's gymnastics was not going to be the soothing tv experience I was hoping it to be.

Eventually I turned off the tv. After about a half hour of tossing and turning and throwing his stuff around, Zeke finally fell asleep (with his feet on my chest, by the way) at 10:30pm. Oh yeah. Once I was sure he was asleep, I got up to go to the bathroom, only to return to the bed to see that my little boy managed to take up two thirds of the bed. I'm still not sure how he did that, but I was left with the foot of the bed. At least that's where the blankets were so I wasn't cold. I also wasn't able to get much sleep.

There were sweet moments though. Such as when Zeke would put his pacifier in my hand, move my hand by his face, then hold onto my hand and his pacifier. Yeah. Those moments almost made it all worth it. Almost.

Oh, and Deacon has started walking. He's been working on it for the last week, and is starting to get a few more steps going here and there. Very exciting times.