A Sleepover with Grandpa and Grandma

Laura was taking her older three on a Disney cruise but felt very uneasy about taking four year old A along for the sake of his safety.  Just this month a child from our own home town of Granger fell overboard through an open window on a cruise.  So she asked if A could have a sleepover with us as something special for him.

 It was special for him and for us.  This morning he said to me "Today is going to be a great day."  I asked why and he answered "It's a surprise."  I asked him at lunch if it was a great day and he said it was!

It was 24 hours from the time his nanny dropped him off until we brought him back to her at home.  Only once did he say he was homesick as he was trying to go to sleep last night.  Otherwise it was a continual refrain of "Guys, you know what?" with lots of happy chatter.

We had asked the nanny to bring his little bike.  That was probably not the smartest idea because he is sooo fast on it that we could hardly keep up.  He took a spill or two but got up and kept going.  We found a safe circle around the playground for riding and he did that circle again and again.

After supper we walked to the place where we had seen deer previously and last night there were ten of them there.  That was pretty exciting and caused us to do research on whether deer slept during the day or night.  Answer--they nap and don't sleep soundly any time.  But they are more active during the night--which A told me means they are nocturnal.  He knows a lot of words!

We played dominoes,  read books, got out some of our kids' really old toys and were introduced to some of his favorite Kindle games. There was plenty to do and no time to be bored.

The plan for sleep was that A would sleep on the floor in our bedroom in a sleeping bag.  At some point, he convinced Jim he needed to be in our bed and that is where he fell asleep.  We hated to move him so I went to sleep in the second bedroom.  Jim lasted for a very short time with him because of his snoring.  So at 1:30 am when I checked on both of them, there was snoring in the bedroom and snoring on the living room couch.  I happily went back to sleep in my quiet room.  We were amused that A took over our new, big,  comfortable bed and we were displaced and sent elsewhere.

More experienced grandparents would have remembered to get A's car seat out of the van.  We didn't want to ask the nanny to make the return trip so I braved Route 1 traffic and merging to go to Walmart and pick up a $19.95 booster seat which Jim put together using the newly purchased screwdrivers. 

The apartment seems empty tonight without him.  It is a real blessing of our being here in this area that we can do this.  We have been grandparents for 21 years and this is only the third time we have had a grandchild over by himself or herself.