Sleepover H(z)ero

The plan was for him to spend the day at Rohan's house on Saturday by himself ; all part of a new plan to hold collective kid care alternatively at each other's houses so the kids are out of our hair for a whole day. He didn't agree to go until Rohan proposed over the phone that they can both play with his new rocket and aliens. So we rushed through shower and breakfast and his dad dropped him a little after noon expecting to pick him up later in the evening.

We got home around 6pm from an afternoon show of Avatar - which did not end a moment too soon for me, by the way - and rang up Rohan's place. Our little bugger didn't even want to come to the phone to talk. The unspoken message was obviously that he had no intentions of returning home any time soon. We settled ourselves with an offer from Naresh to drop him home when he was ready to leave. When the phone rang next, it was to let me know that the two were so tired, they read some books and fell asleep! The little betrayer! He almost always needs his mum to sleep and now, he had been gone half a day and didn't even ask for me before bed. This day had to come too, I thought.

Not so fast, as it turns out. The phone rang at 3am because our very first unplanned sleepover had quickly turned into a sob fest to go home right away after our hero woke up in the middle of the night and found no mummy and daddy around! Poor Naresh had to drive down 20 minutes in the wee hours of the morning to bring him back.

He came into the bed all smiles - no traces of having cried - and I was so glad to have him back. I asked him in the morning if he had cried, he admitted that he did, but also insisted that he had only cried "half, only little bit, just little bit" with his thumb and index finger placed very close to each other to indicate the apparently insignificant amount he had cried. I checked with Kalpana and of course, his story didn't tally: he burst out in tears when told that he can go back home when the sun comes up.

So my mental note of first night spentaway from each other since his birth quickly erased itself. We have more time; my baby hasn't grown up yet...