Pajama Party and Blanket Bingo

Last Friday, B's Mom came on a mission of mercy, to babysit K while we went out for his birthday dinner. We had a nice time, eating Turkish food at Cafe Istanbul and then walking around to observe the Youth of Today, in their blue jeans and strange shoes. It felt really young there on that plaza, but we ate our Cold Stone ice cream and people-watched until we were tired. Unfortunately, that point of exhaustion was only 10 PM. Very sad.

We held off for another half hour and then went home. My Mom-in-law departed soon after we'd returned rather than staying the night. The next day, she called to tell me that she wished she'd stayed, since she'd had an "altercation" with K regarding a fight over pajama time. Knowing her penchant for contrarianism, I could easily imagine what had happened. I assured the "guilty grandma" that there were surely no hard feelings on K's part and that she need not feel bad about getting steamed. The kid can push you to the point of insanity, so I completely understood her certain frustration.

Apparently, she'd remembered having left K's crib side down sometime after the putting-to-sleep ritual had concluded, and so she dutifully crept back into the room and locked the side up. While in the room, she'd thought it was uncomfortably hot and had decided to remove one of the 3 blankets in the crib so that K wouldn't be too hot. (She'd related this story to B after we'd gotten home and had been "scolded" for daring to touch any of the compliment of materials in K's crib).

Feeling one of her precious blankets being removed, K awoke and apparently asked, "Daddy?" Her grandmother told her who she was and let her know that she was just removing one of the blankets to keep her temperature reasonable. K responded, "Blanket! Blanket!" and insisted on having it back in order to return to sleep. The blanket restored, the dutiful grandmother crept out, closed the door, and all was well.

When I heard this story, I laughed and thought about what a quintessentially K story this was. Any other grandmother who was lovingly concerned about her granddaughter's temperature and removed a blanket would be lauded and thanked for her kindness. With our kid, though, we've seen WW3 erupt for less than daring to disturb an item in the crib, so the gut reaction to the event was something akin to fear. We go with the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy to the extreme. And why? Perhaps it could be because the little person we live with take EVERYTHING to the extreme? Yeah.