Girl Time.

A few months ago, I slept over my best friend’s house. She was almost nine months preggo and I wanted to squeeze in some extra bonding time before Baby Touchdown. This wasn’t some sweet idea I came up with all by myself but a result of my natural competitiveness. I was reading FB one night and saw my BFF’s OTHER BFF posted about how she’d slept over for bonding time and I thought, “Shit. I can’t let her get the upper hand. Not when there is a race for godmother about to begin.” Plus, I wanted a night off from the Torture-Mommy-By-Staying-Up-All-Night game my kids enjoy so much.

On my way over to my friend’s house on the subway, I realized something kind of pathetic This would be my first night away from the kids AND away from my husband. Ever. In six and a half years.

I get away from the kids for weekend or overnight trips with David plenty and usually, that’s how I want it, because we desperately need the time together, time without a deranged munchkin shouting demands and talking over us, with urgent, incessant observations about Harry Potter video game or Little Mermaid Two. I love getting away with David. But occasionally, I need to get away from him, too. And heretofore, I’d never done that. (Are you impressed by my casual use of “heretofore”? Whatevs, no big deal. That’s just how I roll, people).

The sleepover was a success. Since she was nine months preggo, we didn’t have to party hard or stay out late which, lets face facts, is the last thing I want to do. Her pregnancy made her as infirm as my default and routine exhaustion makes me, and we sat on her couch and watched a Real Housewives marathon while eating French pastry treats I’d brought from the Slope. Then, to mix it up a bit, we watched What Not to Wear. Then we got in bed and I told her scary stories in the form of “Here’s what is going to fall out of you after you have your baby” and “Here’s what you need to apply to your vag after you have your baby” and “Here’s what is going to happen to your nips after you have your baby.” Once I’d scared her enough that she couldn’t sleep, it was time to turn in. A perfect evening of sorority.

A few weeks later, I was out for drinks with my two tight Mommy friends and I told them about how I’d had a sleepover with my pregnant friend.

“What?” said the first, “We want to have a sleepover too.”

“Yeah,” said the second, and then upping the ante “Better yet, let’s go away. For the weekend. Girls’ getaway.”

Competitions never fails to get shit done. After months of planning, we did it. Left the men with the kids and took off for greener pastures, and lower temperatures. An international voyage!

It wasn’t quite Abu Dabi and we weren’t quite the Sex and the City gang but hey, Canada is a different country with colorful money that has ladies on it and besides, our trip, though it featured way fewer straight-from-the-runway looks, also featured way fewer aggravating puns. Not once did we use the word “Interfrention” for example.

Full report later. Right now, I have to post on FB about the getaway to get my other friends jealous so they’ll want to hang out with me more. Try it, I am telling you, it works.

The imaginary extended family

When my daughter had one imaginary friend, it was charming. Now that she has created an entire extended imaginary family, it’s a different story.

In the beginning, there was Betsy. Bad, bad Betsy – impulsive, pleasure-seeking, lawless Betsy. Soon, however, Seconda started mentioning Betsy’s sister Tipi.

“Her name is Tipi?” I asked, “Is she Native American?”

Seconda nodded.

“And she is a statue which came to life. And she has a bug body.” she elaborated.

“Let me get this straight. It turns out that your imaginary sister, Betsy, has another sister, a half-bug, fully Native American, imaginary girl who used to be a statue?”

Seconda nodded, “And she is VERY naughty.”

Big surprise.

I heard a lot about Betsy and Tipi and their unending rivalries, fistfights and terrible shenanigans for a while. Then Sarah entered the picture. I’m not sure how, if at all, she is related to Betsy, Tipi and my daughter, but the good news is that she is NOT a bad seed imaginary friend. She is actually a very good influence on Seconda. Sarah is honest, kind, law-abiding. Sarah puts the needs of others before herself. Sarah plays well with others. Sarah is a dream child and I’m proud to claim her as my imaginary granddaughter.

Of course, the poor girl doesn’t stand a chance with the rest of the brutes that populate Seconda’s imaginary world. You wouldn’t BELIEVE the injustice she’s subjected to.

“One time, Betsy took all of Sarah’s cookies and all them all up and she didn’t have ANY!”

“One time, Sarah was playing with her favorite Barbie doll and Tipi and Betsy grabbed it right out of her hands and then they TEASED HER and said, “You can’t get us, na-na-nany-pooh-pooh.”

“One time, Tipi cut Sarah’s hand off!”

“One time, Sarah’s head got cracked open and her BRAIN FELL OUT!”

Oh, the window these imaginary friends give to Seconda’s soul. I wouldn’t mind putting some curtains on it.

First Sleepover

A few weeks ago Primo had his first sleepover. I haven’t written about it til now because it has taken me this long to recover. The last sleepover I went to was when I was in junior high, freezing bras and wearing my retainer. I remember it being wildly fun. And I’m sure Primo will remember this sleepover the same way. I recall it as an experience I could only repeat with the help of booze.

Lesson number 1 of parenting: the amount of fun your child has is usually in direct proportion to how exhausted you will be.

The sleepover was my brainchild, incidentally. On the last day of Kindergarten, we found out that Primo and Leigh, his very best friend, will not be in class together next year. These things happen of course, and maybe it will be good for them and prompt them to diversity their friend base. But still it was a blow. To pick up the kids’ spirits (and mine, too, because frankly, I was as sad to know they’d be separated as they were), I suggested that the following week, since there was no school or camp, that Leigh come to our apartment for both of the kids’ first-ever sleepover! The children were thrilled. It feels good to make children so incredibly ecstatic, and perhaps I was so high from this that I neglected to brace myself for the insanity that would ensue.

Let me say, before continuing, that the whole affair would have been fine, fairly unremarkable, if we were to live in a normal-sized residence, with over 200 square feet allotted to each of the member in our household. When you add a fifth person into our modified one-bedroom, you get pretty crowded. Of course, I grew up with me and my sisters and cousins often tossed in a bed all together – that was how I preferred it – so I don’t mind crowded sleeping quarters. As long as everyone is actually SLEEPING in them. Aye, there’s the rub. Because no one sleeps at a sleepover.

We had dinner with my grandmother and the kids ate cartoon-character cookies that were as big as their faces which Leigh had brought over as a sleepover treat. I’d told Primo and Sec that we could eat the graduation cake I’d made a few days earlier for dessert so of course they wanted this as an after-cookie dessert and when I told them it was just a wee bit too much sugar for their little systems, my grandmother pointed out they could always have it for breakfast.

“CAKE FOR BREAKFAST!!!!” they shrieked. The amount of sheer joy was almost at Christmas-level.

Then the kids put on their PJS and we negotiated bedtime reading, not as easy feat for two kids, and less easy for three. Primo wanted Just So Stories. Leigh wanted Meg and Mog and Seconda, for her part, demanded to do the reading herself which nobody liked. Finally, the sleeping bags were unfurled and the lights turned off and the party really got started

I told them they could talk and tell stories and jokes and look at books but that they should stay in their beds. And I do believe they would have, since both Primo and Leigh are generally law-abiding citizens, had not the anarchist Seconda led the way to revolution. All I know is that when I went back in the room a half hour later, the girls were both more bedecked in jewelry than Queen Elizabeth. Not only that, but they had taken out the dress-up trunk and we wearing elaborate costumes – Spiderman suits, animal masks, Hawaiian leis. Meanwhile, Primo was making a major arts and crafts project which involved scissors, glue, chopsticks and construction paper.

I confiscated the craft supplies and had them take off the costumes. Then I tucked them back in and left the room. Ten minutes later, I repeated the process. Ten minutes after that, I removed Sec, the instigator, from the bedroom and put her on a palette on the floor next to my bed. It was 9:30, which in my book is two hours past the point that I have any patience or energy left for child caring, so I informed the kids it was really time to seriously think about winding down. Getting down to it.

“We’re going to stay up ALL NIGHT,” smiled Leigh.

“Yeah,” giggled Primo, lying next to her on the floor, “we are NEVER going to sleep!”

I laughed nervously, “That IS a funny joke, guys. Very funny. But of course now it is really time for sleep/”

With Sec out, they managed to stay lying down, but the noise emanating from the bedroom – the chortles and guffaws, the shrieks of “POOPY FACE!” and “BOOTY HEAD!” Did not indicate we were getting close to slumber. It was 10pm, the hour at which I get ready to go to bed myself. I went back in.

“We WANT to go to sleep,” said Leigh, “But we just CAN’T.”

“Yeah, we just don’t feel SLEEPY,” echoed Primo.

I sat down next to them and sang them a song – the whole time wondering whether Leigh’s mom sang to her, wondering if she thought I had a good voice, considering whether she’d tell her mom that I sang to them and whether Leigh’s mom would think I was a weirdo or an exemplar mom. After that, around 10:30, they did manage to fall asleep somehow, the two of them together in the bottom bunk. Then I worried that Leigh would fall off the bunk and not only hurt herself but wake my downstairs neighbor, so I lined the floor by the edge of the bed with pillows.

Then I joined David on the couch and teared up, so overcome was I with emotion at how much my baby was growing up. There he was, snuggled in bed with his first best friend, the two of them bed side by side, so big – old enough to read and tie knots and have bona-fide sleepover with silly jokes and staying up late -- but still such little kids, still in their kiddie PJS, still with the look of cherubim on their sleeping faces.

So, despite all my grumbling the next morning when they woke at 5:45am (!!!!) the truth is, I really enjoyed the sleepover too. What can I say, I am big old softie.