Thoughts on Sleep-overs

Caleb had a friend stay over last night. I think handling a sleep-over is less like parenting and more like hockey goal-tending. You're less involved in the game but still have to spend most of your time watching closely or something bad can happen. If it does, you try to step in and steer the action away from something dangerous or annoying, then grab a drink and get back to watching the violence. Also, it's loud and generally the participants are missing a few teeth.

I've also found that during a sleep-over you go from “Will you please...” to “Don't!” pretty quick. In fact, I think most of my sentences last night started with either “don't”, “stop”, “quit”, “watch out”, and “if you guys don't...”.

Other thoughts:

“Inside voices” apparently has a time limit. If commanded, I think one can only get about four or five minutes before they expire.


1 kid's average volume: 50 decibles. 2 kids together average volume: 175 decibles. It's like some weird quantum mechanics math or something...


Kids are competitive: “No, my fart was WAY louder than YOUR fart!”


Kids breakup and makeup at lightspeed. When do adults stop doing that?


Choices are better if limited to two:
Me: “What do you guys want from the snackbar?”
Kids: “I want pizza. No, fruitpunch. No, rootbeer float. No, icecream. No, granola bar. No, Snickers, No...
Me: “Do you kids want Nachos or do you want to go home?”


I've never welcomed so much giggling and loudness from the backset of the car then when trying to keep Foster from crying while in his carseat. Strangely, the boys constant shananigans helped keep the little one covered in a blanket of white noise.


The floor is a “totally awesome” place to sleep during a sleepover. That is, until about 1:00am when the couch suddenly becomes a better option.


Kids are fickle:
Mark (on April 4th, May 22nd, June 1st, July 20th) : “Hey Caleb, want to play Mario Bros on the Wii?”
Caleb on each of those days: “No, that game is old and boring.”
Caleb on Sleepover day: “Hey Jalen, want to play Mario Bros?”