Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Trouble with Travel - Sleep Wars

So one thing about our regular trips to visit the in-laws that I do not look forward to is the sleep deprivation. The four Goofs share a hotel room, one parent and one child to each bed. In a previous life I had a cat that always slept in the exact center of the bed - perfect to disrupt the sleep of any human being foolish enough to intrude on his space.

My children, as sentient reasoning creatures, do the cat one better and apply advanced calculus to determine how best to use their small bodies to occupy as much bed space as possible.

My son is particularly ingenious, twisting himself into ever more complex angles. Already crammed into a small portion of bed, I spend nights with him being kicked and prodded as he seeks to become a human tesseract.

Fortunately I have developed a solution. If Goofboy wants to play territory all night - bring it on. My counter-strategy can be summarized in two words: pillow fort.

I sleep in peace, protected by high soft walls. It does, however, provide ready ammunition for the morning assault.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are nice parents, we make one of our boys sleep on the floor (they swap off). Of course, M sleeps on the floor at home half the time...

Have a good trip!

-- Kathy

Father Goof said...

Do they fight for the privilege of sleeping on the floor?

Anonymous said...

They do not fight to sleep on the floor (any more -- they used to). But the week after this post, we stayed in a condo room with two twin beds and a closet (not the walk in kind) -- and they both slept on the floor one night and they argued for the closet...

Kathy

Father Goof said...

Did you use the closet reward as an incentive for good behavior? Be a Machiavellian parent - play them off against each other.

Let's face it - your boys are going to fight anyway, might as well make use of this dynamic.