So, we celebrated Matt's 40th birthday this weekend. Let me start by saying what awesome friends and family we have that celebrated with us (either in person or in spirit) and how lucky we are for it. Let me also start by saying that I am too old to get drunk at a bowling alley on a Saturday night. But, I will go ahead and rehash some of the high points for everyone.
The popular gift for Matt was a "40" of beer. Get it? A 40? Pretty clever, people. Anyway, the evening started out with Zach asking what was in the bag that our babysitter brought over (yes, my friends, my babysitter arrives with beer - you can't have her!) and Matt told him "dad juice". Zach looks at him and goes, "sooooo, dad juice is beer!". Can't pull the wool over that ones eyes!
Then we were off - Matt didn't really want to celebrate his birthday, but I thought we had to do SOMETHING. Now, tell me what do you come up with in Cedar Falls, Iowa for a pretty random (but super fun) group of friends to celebrate your husband turning 40 on a Saturday night? We chose bowling. Classy, right? There is a small little 16-lane house (yep, I talked to the worker guy for quite a while and picked up some pretty sweet bowling lingo - if you need any pointers, let me know) that I figured wouldn't be too busy and had pretty cheap beer - so that is where we headed.
We had lots of fun, lots of laughs and lots of tall boys. We had not very many spares, even fewer strikes and about 8% of our bowlers possess the ability to score over 100. We called it a night pretty late by my standards - about midnight. And here is where reality begins to slap me in the face...
What is it about your kids that they can sense that you maybe aren't getting the requisite amount of sleep that you would like and that maybe, just maybe you aren't at your normal all-star self? Do they have some sort of built in beer-snifferouters? (Sidebar: one night a few weeks ago Maddie and I went to a great kid's birthday party that served beer. I had two well deserved, much needed, not too much to impair me to drive my four year old, beers. We were home in time to say good night to everyone else and when I went to say good night to Ben he goes to me - "huh, I don't know what you did at that party, but you sure smell funny." Thank you Mr. Bloodhound, next time I'll chew on some Tic Tacs on my way home so as not to offend you). Anyway, OF COURSE, Wesley had to get a terrible cold this weekend and isn't sleeping well and OF COURSE the only way to get him to sleep at all is to bring him into bed with us. I don't like doing this when I am stone sober, let alone when I have had a couple of beers. I don't sleep well, Matt doesn't sleep well and Wesley sleeps like a king while I am forced out to a meager 1/32nd of my fairly expensive king size bed while my 13-month old takes up a good 2/3rds and my husband gets whatever fraction is remaining (not a math scholar people, I have no idea what that fraction would actually be). So, add the beginnings of a hangover to this equation and you can guess how my night went.
Sometime around 5:45 I am awakened by someone shaking me, which I think in my stupor is Wesley falling out of bed and have a quick heart attack while showcasing my cat like reflexes and grabbing the offender before any bodily damage is done. Instead it is my six-year old wondering if he can watch Power Rangers. Having kids that respect our rules can sometimes be a double-edged sword. Ben learned to work the remote over the last month or so, which meant he was in a habit of grabbing it, switching it to 298 (Boomerang) and then negotiating the channels around there until he found something he liked to watch - regardless of whether or not Matt, myself or any of the kids were already watching something which led to many a discussion about asking permission to change the channel or watch TV. Which leads to a six year old by my bed at 5:45 asking if he can watch TV when in that moment all I want is to sleep for another sixteen hours and have a kid that just fires up the TV, no questions asked. Anyway, I mumble something about not until 7:00 (another rule, since Ben also went through a phase where he was getting up earlier and earlier when he found out that mom has little patience for visitors in the morning and will tell kids about anything they want to hear to get them out of her room, which meant free reign over the TV for awhile - I had to draw the line when he started getting up before 5 am to score some sweet TV time.) I really have no idea what he did from 5:45 until 7:00, but I'm sure it was educational and creative.
We finally had to get up at 7:00, because Ben was up and demanding some breakfast to go with his Power Rangers, Wesley had been squawking at us from about 6:30 on to get up and get moving from the Pack-n-Play he was moved into sometime after the 5:45 awakening and Zach was yelling from his gated room that he had to pee. None of these things are the way I like to start my morning stone sober, let alone slightly (okay maybe a little more than slightly) hungover. But we are troopers and made it through the morning. My final slap in the face was when I got in the shower to rinse off the grime, sweat (bowling is physical, people!) and powdered sugar (trying to cure my hangover with Powdered Donettes) and turned on the radio to the show, Retro Stars and listened to several songs that I enjoyed in college - on RETRO stars. Yep, too old and too many kids for this sort of night.
So, the moral of the story is...if you are going to go out and celebrate with your husband, spring for a hotel and an overnight babysitter. That way you get to sleep in, enjoy breakfast at noon and maybe squeeze in a nap before you have to go home.
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