First night home off of a fantastic book tour. Book is selling like vegan hotcakes. I’m feeling good. The flight home was fine. The boys go to bed fine.
Not two hours later, Fred, who is 3 1/2, wakes up to pee. That’s normal for him. However, he is so disoriented after being in a hotel room for five nights that he starts shrieking in his half awakedness, confused and bewildered and scared. Fred produces the kind of shriek that rattles your bones. And I try to comfort him but he’s shaking and he’s truly terrified and I was asleep too so I’m trying to get all systems on go as well. Fred is out of his little mind. Poor guy.
So I stand up with him–he’s too distraught to even nurse–and rock him and I try to calm him down. To no avail. And his shrieking has of course now woken up the 6-year-old who is, although not shrieking and trembling, equally disoriented. (We all sleep in one room in one bed; that’s important to know right about now.)
So while I’m rocking a screaming Fred, Miles, awake but in his confusion, struts over to the shelving unit where we keep his clothes, and–remember, he is half asleep–proceeds to pull down his pants and pee, thinking it is the toilet.
By this time, my dear husband has rushed in and is half laughing, half incredulous at what has just transpired. He gets Miles back to bed and starts to clean up the lovely clothing Miles has unknowingly peed all over.
Fred by now has calmed down from my pacing and rocking back and forth and as I breathe a sigh of relief and hug his body close, I feel a warm trickle down my body: Fred is peeing as well. Had you forgotten that’s why he was waking up in the first place? I had!
I stripped off our clothes and got Fred back to bed and got on new PJs myself.
The rest of the night was uneventful. As it should be for celebrity Attachment Parenting moms who make it look so easy. Ha.
Read about Mayim and her family bed.
