The Bathroom Floor is Cold

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The Warden and I retired at about 9:00 last night. I was beat. He stayed up for awhile checking out some of the videos for the 2013 curriculum for church for the Young Men's program. We decided that we would show one tonight for Family Home Evening. As he showed them to me, I would doze off. Yes, I'm that kind of wife....darn it!

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Each time I'd wake up, I'd hear voices (rather, a voice) down the hallway. It was always #6. He had had a nap earlier in the day, so falling asleep was a bit of a challenge. He shares a room with #4, and I knew with what I was hearing that #4 was not going to be getting any sleep for quite some time if things continued as they were.

I called #6 into the bedroom and explained that I was tired. I also shared that the one thing that was making it impossible to sleep was his voice that I could hear down the hallway. I told him this just wasn't going to work. He said he was talking to #4. I told him that I needed, for his safety, to keep him on the same floor of the house as me but were there other options of places upstairs where he could sleep.

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We discussed the laundry room, the bathroom, and the hallway. We discussed the pros and cons of each area, and he finally decided on the laundry room. He asked if he could use some extra blankets, and I gave him the thumbs up. He, very maturely--actually, this entire conversation was very mature--took the blankets and set about setting up a little nest for himself in the laundry room. He quickly learned, though, that the dog was asleep in one of the baskets of dirty laundry, and right now, the dog doesn't smell very good--long story. I HAVE to bathe her today. Needless to say, the laundry room quickly ceased to be an option.

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Because of the fear of being trampled by some wild needing-to-go-to-the-bathroom-in-the-middle-of-the-night sibling, the hallway also was no longer a choice. That left the bathroom as the final option--at least a child would find a light switch before he/she found him lying there. The bedroom was never taken away as a possibility as long as he was willing to go in, lay down, and be silent, but I think #6 felt that being given a choice was fun, so a choice other than the obvious was what he was going to make. Either that, or the idea of being silent was so distasteful that ANYTHING else would be better.

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He laid out his blankets, hollered "g'night" to us, and I fell peacefully back to sleep and remained that way until quite early this morning.

When I got up for the day, I went down the hallway and threw in a load of laundry. I peeked across the hall into the bathroom and found one blanket and a pillow on the floor but no boy. I walked down the hallway, and there he was, snoozing soundly in his bed.

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A few hours later, #6 woke and came into our bedroom. The Warden shared that shortly after I'd fallen asleep, #6 had returned to tell the Warden that he was heading to his bed. #6 added, "The bathroom floor is hard and cold."

Gotta love those natural consequences!