Saturday, May 02, 2009

The morning after a sleepover

I'm wondering whether it's possible that one thing that happens to parents of "only" children is that they never grow past the caution of the early days of the first baby, because their first baby is always their first, and last...

Well, whatever the reason, our daughter, who's nine, had her first-ever sleepover with a friend last night. The friend came here (note the caution: we'll try it on the home field first, then see if she's ready to sleep away from us in a strange place without even a grandparent or cousin around).

They had a blast last night, playing Rock Band (the old songs like "Eye of the Tiger" that don't have suggestive lyrics) and watching the brand-new Barbie movie, Thumbelina (which they loved), but here's the rub: the sleepover friend can survive on five hours of sleep, and our daughter can't. She's a 10-1/-hours-of-sleep-a-night girl. Last night they went to sleep at 1:00 and the friend was up at 6:10 while our daughter said "I'm up" about five times and went right back to sleep like a good little narcoleptic.

Right now, after successfully rousing and dressing her and heading to IHOP, our daughter is clearly knackered. Mad Libs have been a disaster. (And DH and I didn't get as much sleep as we should have, either, due to the boisterous activities echoing down the hall.)

Any of you experienced sleepover parents have advice? Do they grow out of their sleep-needs differences? How do you handle the morning after a sleepover?

1 comment:

Siemens said...

DH successfully finessed the bad Mad Libs moment and they went on to another half-day of great times. DD was upset when her friend had to leave. I left the hide-a-bed out in the living room and she napped for two hours--that's how tired she was.