Sleepovers.

Two to three weeks ago, we met up with Savannah's bff (and her mom) at the pool. It was nice, and Jack was actually a good companion for the bff's younger sister. Savannah actually told me that Jack was being "pretty cool".. a rare compliment. After maybe 4 hours or palling around together, the girls asked if Savannah could come over to play, and to spend the night. Kids being kids, they asked this in front of Jack. Being left out, Jack was of course upset, and started getting mad at me for never letting him have sleepovers, etc. This is true that he's never had a friend over to stay the night. I was not thrilled that he was doing this in front of the other girls (and both parents, as the dad later showed up), and I didn't want to entertain his demands/concerns/etc right then and there.

When we got home, I had a talk with Savannah about why Jack was upset, and asked how she would feel were the roles reversed. Of course she says she understands.. by the age of 11, you would think she could. I don't know. Her response pretty much was that I should just invite Jack's bff over. Yeah, thanks for the tip, kid. I have actually mentioned a few times to his friend's mom about planning a sleep over, but the conversation had never gotten past the "hey, this is an idea" stage. Having spent some several months now emailing back and forth, it seemed to me like maybe Jack could handle a sleep over here at our house- only with this boy, though. So we scheduled Jack's very first over-nighter for last Tuesday.

I had planned to take the kids to the pool, because Tuesdays they have either Ice Cream night or Hot Dog night. (There are two pools in the area we can go to, and each offers something different). Unfortunately, the weather didn't care about my plans. It dumped a crap-ton of rain on us.. at one point, we all just about had a heart attack from a crack of thunder that was pretty much directly over our heads. So that left us with one less time killer. (Jack isn't a great host- he wants to do one of two things .. video games or cartoons. His friend gets bored sometimes and I have to ask Savannah to play with him. Thankfully she doesn't mind). So before the friend came over, I went to the store and grabbed some ice cream, and a frozen pizza. Then, to kill some time, I got out all of the drawing stuff- markers, paper, etc- and gave them a bunch of cardboard to cut out. They listened to Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and had a great time for a while. The rest of the evening went well, until about 9:30, when they were ready to settle in Jack's room.

We have a blow up mattress that Savannah always uses for when her friends come over. This time we set it up in Jack's room, not right up against Jack's bed (as he wanted) but perpendicular. They would still have a bit of room to play on the door, the friend would see the night light from the bathroom, and not hurt himself on anything getting in and out of bed. The boys (probably Jack) decided to move the mattress so that it was parallel and right up against Jack's bed. This meant that the friend's head would be right next to the night stand.. and sure enough, when the friend was jumping into his bed, and Jack turned the light off, the friend missed and hit his head on the corner of the night stand. Poor thing. :( That was it for him, and he ended up going home.

We're going to try again this Tuesday, although I have some trepidation about it. The weather should be much better this time around, so I can only hope the pool works out this time- and that nobody gets hurt. Jack was so upset that it didn't work out last time- I felt bad for his friend, but for him as well. If it doesn't work out this time, I'm done for this summer. We'll have to just wait a while. Too stressful!