I’ve wanted Little Pea to stay at Pog Towers for a night since…well pretty much since he was born.  With a teeny, tiny house, no spare room and no cot though, it wasn’t really do-able. 2¼ years on it still wasn’t really do-able, but last Saturday, we did it anyway :o)

Sister 2 and I took Little Pea on a walk to attempt to wear him out.  It turned into a dinosaur hunt, but sadly we only found dinosaur poo (otherwise known as moss).  I was very impressed with Sister 2’s creativity.  Little Pea was less though.  He looked at her when she told him in tones of great excitement that there must be dinosaurs nearby as there was a lot of dinosaur poo and informed her that ‘No.  Not dinosaur poo.  Stegosaurus poo.’  (Very impressive, but he does still insist that everything is blue, so we’re not entirely sure where that moment of cleverness came from..).

So we investigated dinosaur sounds and deposits:

Had a bit of a lie down:

‘Are you coming with us?’ ‘No, not ready yet’.  ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Looking at trees and sky.’  ‘Are you going to be a hippy when you grow up?’ ‘Yes’.  ‘What colour are the leaves?’ ‘Blue’.

And for some reason, I became his dog:

By the time we left Sister 2’s house and got back to Pog Towers it was time for tea.  I made mine as Little Pea ate all his, then we sat down together so I could eat and…’I eat that too’.  So it was one mouthful for me, one for him.

A quick cuddle while we watched ‘In the Night Garden’ (Seriously?  What weird brain came up with that?)

And then it was bath time.  Only Pog Towers doesn’t have a bath…  But we did quite well with the shower.  It was four for the price of one really – Little Pea got washed, so did I, all his clothes and most of the bathroom. He even insisted on wiping down the windows.

And bed – now that was exciting.  I’d blacked out the room with blankets (I took my curtains down about two years ago and still haven’t got round to replacing then), rolled up another blanket so he couldn’t fall down the side of the bed and Sister 1 had sent books, toys and nightlight with him.  I honestly thought there was a good chance we’d read a few books and he’d nod off.

To cut a very long story short, at 8.30pm I ended up getting ready for bed myself and being instructed exactly where my arms and legs should go.  And they were not allowed to move.  At any point.  Because then Little Pea woke up.  He also insisted that Teddy had to sleep in the bed with us.  Teddy that has a cow bell round his neck, that clangs every time anyone moves.  But by 9pm (oops), SUCCESS!:

I woke up about every five minutes.  It was like sleeping with a wriggly, sleep talking worm.  He talked so much I almost ignored him when at 1am he got a bit frantic about his blanket.  Being the queen of blankets, I offered him pretty much every one I had in the house until I realised that the blanket in question was actually his muslin. Which he had been holding all the time.

At 6am I was woken for the final time with ‘Poggy, let’s go on an adventure.  With pasta’.  I didn’t know 6am existed on a Sunday morning.  I also didn’t know why pasta was required on the adventure.  We spent some time using the bed as a swimming pool and being a shark, watching an unhappy Norman staring at us from the top of the wardrobe, and finding a fully functioning kitchen under the duvet, where Little Pea made and fed me breakfast from.  But then we got up to have real breakfast, which seemed to involve a few magic tricks as Coco Pops appeared just about everywhere…the table, the floor, between fingers and inside pyjamas…

But we made it!  We even went on a little adventure to the postbox before Sister 1 arrived to take him home.  Only we didn’t take any pasta :o)

I know this will be a pretty standard set of events for Mummies and Daddies everywhere, but for this Auntie, it was brilliant, and I’d do it again as long as I didn’t actually have to be awake the next day.  It was very quiet – too quiet – when he left.  But Norman and I kind of appreciated that too :o)