I'll never let MY kids get away with THAT!

I had many pre-conceived notions about parenting that were shattered when my own, real kids came along. For example, I often would catch myself thinking (or even occasionally saying out loud), "why can't those parents CONTROL their children?" in reference to a kid crying in a restaurant, running around, etc. Well now, I know why. It's because we CAN'T!

Before I had kids, I would sometimes hear about how parents would let their babies or kids sleep with them in their parents bed. I would think, "Well, I'll never let my kids do THAT!" They have to suck it up and learn to sleep in their own beds.

I was pondering this former stance of mine as I grabbed a book and tucked myself into my daughter's twin bed last night, complete with pink floral quilt on top. Why am I sleeping alone in my daughter's pink-blanketed twin bed instead of next to my wife in our plush king-sized bed? Because my 3 year old daughter has decreed it to be so.

My son, our first child, was born in 2003. He was nearly a perfect kid ... quiet, slept through the night after only about 2-3 months, never threw tantrums, etc. But he was just tricking us into having a second child. When my daughter came along, she was a different animal entirely. Physically, she is just a beautiful, if not more so, than my son. But this one has a temper and a scream to match. My friend Wes once described her scream as similar to a Jurassic Park velociraptor.

But she doesn't always resort to tantrums or screaming to get her way. Sometimes, she turns on the charm instead. It's amazing to me how a 3-yr old already knows that she is really cute and uses it against me. Anyway, one night a few weeks ago, my daughter walked out of her bedroom and into ours and crawled into bed with us. We were tired because we were already asleep or half-asleep, so we let her stay.

We could force her to go to sleep in her own bed, but she looks really cute all balled up in our big bed. Plus, if we force her to go to her bed, we get the "cry of the velociraptor". Sometimes it's just not worth fighting.

On the plus side, my wife and I are probably actually sleeping a little better ... my wife because I'm not in the room waking her up with my snoring (apparently inherited from my grandfather), and me because I'm not getting kicked in the night by my daughter, who, we've discovered, moves around a lot in her sleep.

Somewhere out there, there may be someone reading this that thinks, "I'll never let my kids do that!" Well, you might if you walk a mile in their, er, pink floral blanket.