This week saw a momentous milestone in the Whittle household – Flea’s first sleepover.
It didn’t start well, because one of us had completely forgotten there was a sleepover. I think you know it wasn’t the five-year-old.
No worries, we managed to get everyone safely out of the school's late room (I may have been a few ten minutes late for the pick-up) and safely into the car. We made a brief stop at Tesco on the way home for a bag of Haribo, a tube of Pringles and a packet of satsumas. Then I got home and ordered a large pizza, chicken wings and garlic bread from Dominos. At this point I became an official school LEGEND, let me tell you.
After dinner, the girls set up the Wii and decided to test out the copy of Just Dance 2 we’d been sent. It’s fair to say that Flea has inherited my total lack of natural rhythm, but she took her defeat in good grace, and I may have been guilty of periodically pinning her best friends arms down to give Flea a chance to catch up.
At 7.30pm, I kid you not, Flea said, “Well, it’s getting a bit late, I should brush my teeth and get into bed.” God, I love my daughter. The fact we've been given a Toy Story 3 ReadyBed may or may not have had something to do with the eagerness to get into bed. Although there was a rather heated debate about who got to sleep in it.
The girls settled together into the inflatable guest bed and read each other jokes until they fell asleep. The evening calm was briefly broken at about 10pm when Zara (our guest) told me she’d had a bad dream but “I looked at Flea and realised I was with my best friend and I was happy again.” Bless.
I went to bed, congratulating myself on a PERFECT sleepover.
3.25am.
Flea is crying.
I can hear Zara saying, “Why are you crying Flea?”
Flea continues to cry.
It’s getting louder. I stagger out of bed, completely groggy, and stumble to Flea’s room.
“Wosrong?”
In between sobs and sniffs, Flea manages to get a sentence out:
“Zara’s….foot….is……..touching….my kneeeeeeeeeeeee…..”
“Uh?”
"It's touching me… and I DON'T LIKE IT"
Flea continues to cry.
I decide to start with the obvious: “Um, can you just move your knee?”
There’s a pause.
The crying stops. Flea says, in a tone of complete amazement: “Oh. Yes, I can.”
"Brilliant.”
