We told the kids if they took a nap on the way to Michigan, they could stay up late on NYE. They happily obliged (little did we know what we had gotten ourselves into!)
We went out for a short dinner at a local favorite restaurant before heading home for the night. The kids donned their party hats, grabbed their noise makers, and proceeded to hold the loudest dance party ever. After tiring of that, they sat on the couch and made a bit more noise.
We somehow convinced them to get into their pjs. They decided to "cheers", and Brooke announced that every time they clinked glasses they needed to drink (uh, milk that is).
We then offered them an exciting surprise - we were going to allow them to have a "sleepover"! The kids have been begging for about a year to sleep over in each others rooms, and we've been avoiding starting any sort of trend like that. It was assumed that since they were up late and tired, that the sleepover would be easy-as-pie ...
We were SO wrong. Dad put the kids to bed and it seemed to be going well. Ryan immediately closed his eyes to sleep. Then I listened along on the room monitor to come to the realization that Brooke had other plans. She continued to whisper and talk to him, eventually riling him up. Over the next two hours they repeated called us up, came out of the room, switched beds, fought over blankets and pillows, giggled, talked ... you get the idea. Finally it was 10:15PM and they both started crying. Ryan lost his bunny, Brooke gave him her bunny (a different one, but same animal at least!), but it wasnt good enough. I went up there and he was distraught over the missing bunny - she basically just wanted him to leave her alone. She was tired and done of the messing around.
I brought him back to his room and put him in his own bed. She was pretty much asleep by the time her bedroom door was closed. He took some calming down and eventually fell asleep too. We thought that was the end of it. Then he called me at 3AM screaming and crying - a combination of anger and sadness. He continually apologized, told me he missed his sister, he didnt want to sleep alone, and then moved into yelling at me about how he wasnt tired and I was making him angry. He finally passed out again...
I think we all learned our lessons. There will not be any sleepovers for the foreseeable future :)
(And both kids were up at 7:30 the next morning. Pretty close to their usual wakeup time, except they were about 3 hours short due to the "sleepover".)
