When Kidlet was about 2 and change, Mom and I decided, completely spur of the moment, to take him on a trip to Seattle. She had a week off from work and I wasn’t working yet, so she decreed we were heading out of town. We packed a few things, threw his supplies in the car, and off we went.
We didn’t realize until we got to Seattle that it was Labor Day weekend. There was a giant music fesitval in town, not a single hotel to had anywhere, and, of course, we hadn’t thought of something as trivial as RESERVATIONS. Now, you might think that we would concentrate on finding a hotel room first, right? Oh, no. Of course not. We went to the planetarium and we wandered around the music festival (where Mom got quite the education in modern music and dress) and we had lunch. Somewhere around 4ish we decided it might be a decent idea to be sure we had a place to sleep for the night.
Mom’s usual hotel was booked. So we tried her second-favorite place. Booked. Then another one down the street. Booked. By now, we’re starting to realize we MAY have a made a mistake, here. But we’re too stubborn to quit (and she had me to get in and out of the car anyway) so we went through pretty much every halfway affordable hotel in downtown Seattle. Somewhere around 9pm, Mom remembered a pretty nice place she and an ex-boyfriend had stayed at in a nearby suburb. So off we went. And they had a room! They actually had a room with a lil fridge and a king size bed (remember that, this is gonna be important) and they even had an Arby’s down the street, which was a good thing, because we were all starving by this point.
It didn’t occur to us to DRIVE to Arby’s - oh, no, we took the 2-year-old by the hand and hustled his ass down the sidewalk and we booked it. We made it to the restaurant five minutes before they closed, got our food to go, and headed back to the hotel. No problem, everything’s set for a peaceful night and a nice trip to the zoo tomorrow, right?
Yeah. Sure. Except that Kidlet, after having food and finally settling down for bed, turned SIDEWAYS on the bed between Mom and I and STARFISHED. This left us with about 6-8 inches each of luxury mattress on either side of him. Now, anybody with any sense knows you DO NOT DISTURB SLEEPING TODDLERS ON PAIN OF DEATH, so we had to figure out something. After nearly falling off for the third time, Mom gave up, grabbed a blanket, and went to sleep on the floor. Me? Oh, hell, no. I’m too stubborn for my own good and I was NOT going to cede a whole bed to a 2-year-old. So I spent the whole damn night clinging to the mattress like the edge of a cliff, dozing more than sleeping, all while Kidlet slept the sleep of the sweetly innocent, unaware that his lil life hung by a teeny tiny thread...
