A long time ago, I told Nicole this tale about elves cleaning her room. (Please don't lecture me on inventing stories about elves, but not Santa/Tooth Fairy/Easter Bunny/Barney/other figments of kids' imaginations. I just don't even have an explanation for that sort of hypocrisy. Nope, none at all. Well, except that you could say I've been known to be fickle on occasion -- I guess that's sort of an explanation. Oh, and sometimes I'm flaky, but I think that's unrelated.)
So after the truth came out about the elves (I had to tell her -- she was starting to think she could create messes all over the place and that the elves would take care of it while she slept; it was really getting quite out of control), Nicole asked me to write a sentence in her journal, and I wrote, "I wish the elves would clean the house while I sleep. For real."
But what I got was so much better than a clean house. Grant woke up in the middle of the night and said he wanted milk. Well, I'm one of those hard-nosed mamas who doesn't put up with such shenanigans unless the kid has a really good excuse (like puppy eyes or sick eyes or some other kind of look that makes me have pity on them). So I told Grant no, and to go back to bed. He ended up falling asleep on my floor (and I moved him later when I woke up with Nicole, who said her nose was all stuffy -- urgent matter, could NOT wait until morning). So that's up two times already before three a.m. Ugh! Around 4:00 a.m., I heard Scotty rolling over in bed, back and forth, to and fro, and making little baby squeaks, like he was going to be expecting a bottle in the near future. I closed my eyes and pretended that none of this was happening. When I got up with Nicole again at 6:00, I checked on the boys and found Grant asleep in bed with his sippy cup of milk on the floor. Then when I went downstairs, I saw an empty baby bottle on the coffee table.
I thought, "Clint is so sweet to get up with the boys in the night. But he shouldn't have done that; now he's going to be so tired for work! I'll let him sleep in." At 7:30, Clint got up and I ran to ask him what time he got up with the boys. He swears he did NOT get up with either one of them. And Scotty didn't wake up until 8:00 a.m. So strange. My only explanation is that the elves came ... for real.
