1 Mother 2 Another

We’re going to be taking a long
weekend in a couple days to visit some family, and it’ll be
the first time we’ve really traveled with Cora – the
last time she got on a plane she was eight months old and moving to
Texas. We traveled fairly often with Maddie as a baby and toddler,
flying regularly to Texas to visit family, but now there’s
neither the need nor the cash and we’ve become quite the
homebodies. So it’ll be a new experience for the family, and
I’m just a tad worried.

One of the reasons I’ve been working
so diligently to get Cora into a big-girl bed is this upcoming
trip; I just couldn’t bear the thought of having to bring a
pack-n-play with us, and wanted Cora to be familiar enough with big
beds that she wouldn’t freak out. We’re not a
co-sleeping family, so everyone’s pretty set in their nightly
ways, and I thought the girls might have some difficulty getting
used to having someone else in the room. With that in mind, we set
up a sleepover.


Both girls were wildly enthusiastic: Cora and Maddie would sleep
together in one of their rooms, snuggling together and giggling the
night away. When the big night arrived recently, they’d
decided to sleep in Cora’s room – I think Maddie wanted
to try out Cora’s big new bed.


All seemed to be well until we were tucked into Cora’s bed
and on to our last book. Maddie looked around apprehensively at the
unfamiliar stuffed animals and said, “I think I want to have
the sleepover in my own room, in my bed instead of
Cora’s.” Cora was agreeable, and so the whole circus
traveled one room over.


Sixty seconds later, Maddie was eyeing Cora’s flailing legs
uncertainly. “Mommy, I think I want to sleep by myself
tonight. I don’t think I want another person in the bed with
me, where she could kick me and wake me up. I really don’t
want to do a sleepover.” She repeated this a few times, with
growing anxiety, until Cora burst into tears and said,
“Mommy! I want to sleep in my own bed! I don’t want to
sleep here!”


So the sleepover was aborted, and I still have no idea how this
weekend is going to go. I’ve actually rented two rooms
– one for the grownups and one for the kids – just so
that the girls can each have their own bed. I’d floated the
idea of one room with a roll-out cot, and Maddie fretted aloud at
the possible noises and movements coming from Mommy and Daddy until
I let it drop.


Yes, my two-year-old and four-year-old are going to be getting
their own room, and I worry that even that won’t be enough.
I’m reasonably certain there won’t be any napping going
on in the afternoon, but I’m hoping that they’ll at
least sleep a bit at night in those big ole beds all by themselves.


It’s a four-day trip. They have to sleep sometime, right?