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I have definitely been in a mood today.

My real and actual sock basket.

I spent the better part of the day going through drawers and discarding clothes that were too small for Crafty, Sport, Scout, and Curly. I've pretty much filled the minivan with things to take to the DI. I guess maybe I went a little overboard because when my sweetie got home he came back to the laundry room where I was attempting to fold a huge basket full of socks.

"Maybe we should just get rid of these too," I suggested hopefully.

"How much is it going to cost to buy all new things after you give it all away?" he asked a little too seriously.

Message received...

Guess I'll be folding more socks tomorrow.

Pinterest Flowers

I asked Teach to put up some random pics for me again since I couldn't seem to get my brain working today. It seems my creative juices have dried up...

When I was younger, I was a craft-a-holic. I loved working with my hands doing embroidery, felt, plastic canvas, hooking rugs, you name it, I was there. Maybe tomorrow I'll show you my greatest creation (if I can get it out of the cedar chest where it's been hiding for almost 30 years). Kind of silly, huh?

So it would seem natural that I would LOVE Pinterest. But I really don't. My days are so filled with other things now that the only time I do crafts is with my girl scouts, on a road trip, and sometimes during General Conference. I prefer to spend time with my sewing machine when I want to make something.

But Teach loves Pinterest and she is constantly showing me some new thing she would like to make. Sometimes it's food and sometimes it's crafts. So last weekend she raided my fabric and rallied her little sisters while I wasn't home and they created some really cute flowers for their hair. Most of them were eventually attached to a headband although her pictures just show them this way.

I wish I could say I participated in this activity, but I was a terrible mom and mostly I just complained about the fact that the yellow gingham USED to be the exact size for a quilt back.

Thanks for taking up the slack, Teach! Maybe someday Pinterest and I will become best friends. Until then, keep showing me the pictures, maybe one of them will get my creative juices flowing again.

More Broken Bones Stories

I've told you before that broken bones tend to run in my family. Yesterday Curly was playing ball in the mudroom when he took a tumble and smacked his pinky finger on the dog food box. He was pretty upset about it, but not upset enough for medicine or an ice pack, so I headed back to my regular tasks. Half an hour later he was complaining again. After this happened a dozen times, I told him I would take him to the doctor on Saturday morning if he wasn’t feeling better.

So bright and early (OK, it was 9:00) I examined his finger. It was swollen with a black bruise ring very near the center knuckle. Of course we headed to the InstaCare. They moved us through quickly and soon we were stressing over X-rays. Curly was afraid of the big machine, but only for a minute. He was so excited to see what his hand looked like on the inside!

When we were finished, the doc told us that his bones were fine and intact. He had the nurse wrap the smallest two fingers together and cautioned us to use the wrap for five days. Gratefully, we headed for the door. We hadn’t been home five minutes when I noticed that the bandage was off. I scolded Curly and rewrapped his finger.

You know, I’m not a “helicopter” mom, but this whole deal reminded me of another story and another son. When the Gym Rat was in 6th grade, he broke his thumb playing football. The doctor gave him what looked like a rubber thumb to wear so he could continue to play ball. He was supposed to use it for three weeks and I don’t think he had it on for 3 minutes!

Another time he ran into a chain at the park while riding his bike with friends. He mentioned once that his arm was hurting a little, but then he didn’t say anything else…for a couple of days. Nearly a week had passed before he casually mentioned that he didn’t feel any better and maybe he needed to see a doctor. So I took him in. Sure enough, his arm had been broken (for a week!) and I definitely got the bad parent of the year award. Not that it mattered, he did the same thing he did with the thumb…on the way to school he would slip off his cast and place it in his backpack. Then as he was walking across our driveway, he would pull it out and wriggle his hand back inside. It wasn’t until Bossy told me what he was doing that I put a stop to it. And you thought I was a bad kid when I was that age!

Cleaning the Vacuum

See all that food on Baby Doll’s tray? Now do you notice that mischievous little grin? She has a new philosophy. As soon as she is finished, she sweeps all that is left right off the edge and onto the floor. Now this isn’t a problem if the dog is around; Daisy licks everything up real quick. Unfortunately, sometimes she is outside and then I have to sweep everything up.

If I were a stellar housekeeper, crumbs would disappear as soon as they were made. But that’s not my life. I sweep the crumbs (and the cars and the crayons and the candy wrappers…) into a pile and then I wait for one of the kids to take care of it for me. This is probably a big mistake because if I were cleaning “the pile,” I would first PUT AWAY the crayons and the cars and toss the candy wrappers and big crumbs BEFORE I ever get out the vacuum. The kids usually manage to take care of the cars, but everything else goes right up the vacuum!

Maybe if we had a regular vacuum this wouldn’t be a problem, but we happen to have a Central Vac and that means all that dirt (and crayons and candy wrappers…) travels through pipes in my house and down into a large canister in the furnace room. About once a month or so we take this canister off and dump it. It’s a good system …when the kids aren’t using it.

So I finally got tired of having bad suction in my kitchen. We took the 40- minute drive to visit my BIL and borrow the “big drill” and the worm. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned that my FIL was a plumber. When he passed away, he left tons of tools to his kids. This particular worm has cleaned tons of drains and it happens to work perfectly for cleaning out vacuum pipes as well.

It’s quite a procedure! My sweetie is at the front of the line and he is responsible for feeding the worm down into the hole. We station kids about every 5 to 10 feet along the worm to keep it from ripping holes in the walls or scraping up the floor (like we’d notice!).


The kids have to wear work gloves to protect their hands from the spinning metal. Because the worm is so long, we have to take it clear out the front door and into the yard. I get the fun job…I get to run the drill! It takes us about 20 minutes to get everything set up. Then it takes about 2 minutes to clear the blockage.

I’m so glad a married a plumber’s son! The company charges nearly a hundred dollars to come out and do the same thing. I know one lady whose kids kept sticking their Hot Wheels cars down the pipes. That’s a pretty expensive racetrack!



But the best story I know about a Central Vac came from one of my students when I was teaching. He tells a story of building a new house. During the process, they had to put a bunch of stuff in storage. When the house was finally done (with a Central Vac installed), they went to the storage unit to get their furniture.



They carried a heavy dresser into one of the bedrooms and pushed it up against a wall. When they opened the middle drawer, they found a huge horrible surprise. A family of mice had nested there and baby mice were suddenly running around everywhere. My student pulled the door of the room closed and quickly plugged in his central vac. Then he proceeded to vacuum up each of those baby mice until they all disappeared. And not a single one clogged up the pipe. Can you just imagine the smell when he dumped his canister? Ewww!

See any mice, Curly? I have the vacuum out!

Master Gardeners

 
First I want to show you this cute onesie that Baby Doll won from Rhonda @ wherever you go...there you are.. Doesn’t she look adorable? OK, so I’m a little biased.

Pretty sure I’ve mentioned that I’ve been watching my grandkids all summer. Near the end of July, the kids started going back to school, and now that it’s September, I only have my 4-year-old grandson, Burrito, my 3-year-old son, Curly, and almost one-year-old Baby Doll left at home. Scout is in kindergarten, so we have her for half the day except that she sleeps in until noon so it’s not like she’s really here anyway.

So with just these three little ones at home, I’m having a rather difficult time accomplishing anything during the day. My biggest babysitter for the boys is our humongous sand pile, and I send them out there often. The problem with that is that they like to turn on the water and then they get in trouble when Burrito’s dad gets here to pick them up. Now since they can’t use water as a diversion, they have found something new. Apparently, they are both planning to be Master Gardeners when they grow up, which is next week if you ask Curly.

First I discovered three random ears of corn laying on the patio table. No one seemed to know anything about them. Then, on Thursday, both boys came running in, “Grandma, Grandma,” Burrito shouted. “We found a watermelon!” Curly was close at his heels. Yup. They found a watermelon all right. They pulled it right out of the watermelon patch. It was about the size of a baseball. Patience already stretched thin by my inability to deal with my life this week, I came slightly unglued. “That watermelon is never going to grow any more,” I snapped. “You killed it.” Curly started to cry. Burrito looked at me stone-faced. “It was Curly’s idea,” he said. This made Curly cry harder. “No it wasn’t.” He looked like his heart was ready to break as I continued to rake them over the coals about playing in the garden.

Last week they stomped on all the cherry tomatoes and when I cussed them about it, Burrito’s response was, “But I don’t like cherry tomatoes.” I immediately sentenced them to unloading the dishwashers as a punishment job. They complained, but eventually they made their way to the kitchen and started tossing Tupperware bowls into the cupboard. I put Baby Doll in the high chair and opened a jar of baby food. Maybe I could keep them on task if I were sitting right there. I spooned the pulverized lasagna into her open mouth. I must have been really tired because I was totally oblivious until Burrito approached the table. In his hand he was carrying Princess’s bottle of body mist. The strong scent lingered. “I sprayed the soap on all the dishes,” he proclaimed. “That is not soap!” I screeched. I snatched the bottle from his hand, stomped across the room and checked the dishwasher. Yup, sure enough. He had sprayed all the clean dishes with the body mist. At least they smelled good…I hung my head in defeat. Then I proceeded to restart the dishwasher. I guess there is more than one way of getting out of doing a job. I sent them back to the sand pile.

Together We Read

Like many families, we try to get together for a few minutes each evening to read from the scriptures and hold a family prayer. This can get a little crazy some nights with all the different schedules. Tonight was one of those nights. You all know it was Curly’s birthday. By the time we finished his party, it was nearly 10:00. I had to enter my Tupperware order before midnight because some of the specials were ending (and I can’t pass up a good deal!), so I shooed everyone downstairs to watch a movie. I got my order done with 4 minutes to spare and then I waited patiently for the movie to end.

At 12:25, my sweetie came upstairs. Behind him was a procession of big kids carrying sleeping little kids to their beds. When they were all settled, those of us who were still somewhat functioning gathered around the kitchen table. I opened the Holy Bible to Leviticus 13. The Drama Queen asked for the number of verses and when the Dog Walker told her there were 59, she suggested that maybe we could just read half a chapter because everyone was so tired. Since I had the book, I had no intentions of short-cutting, so I simply began to read.


For those of you who are not familiar with Leviticus, it appears to be a handbook for the priests. This particular chapter tells the priests how to decide if someone is a leper. I’m not sure who started with the giggles, maybe it was my reading, or maybe it was the Dog Walker, but by the time we were finished, we were laughing so hard the tears were flowing all around. After 38 verses of horrible descriptions of leprosy, it describes a “freckle.” The Drama Queen and Prima Donna doubled over with fits of laughter. The Dog Walker was so amused that he spit on me! That just made it ten times worse!


Verse 40 states, “And the man whose hair is fallen off his head, he is bald;” (talk about obvious).  And in 41, “And he that hath his hair fallen off from the part of his head toward his face, he is forehead bald:” At this point we all looked at my sweetie (who just happens to be ‘forehead bald’).


Then in verse 45 “the leper must put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean.” My girls did an excellent job portraying this for us in a visual way just in case we missed it during the reading.


Teach thought maybe we were being just a little too light-hearted about the scriptures, but I believe studying together should be a time for us to learn and enjoy each others’ company. Maybe if we start at 9:00 PM it won’t be as funny as it was at 1:00 AM. And maybe instead of a horrible boil, it will just be a freckle.

Sport Turned 8

And the birthdays just keep on coming! Sport turned 8 last Thursday and on Friday we had a big birthday bash for 16 of his closest friends. It was a carnival-type atmosphere here in our backyard. Normally I am all for the calmer, simpler type parties where we play red rover and duck duck goose, but for some reason, I just felt like he needed something special.

My sweetie had made some carnival games for a Pack Meeting earlier this year so I convinced him that would make a fun birthday party. We had a Plinko game, a beanbag toss, a ring toss, a duck pond, and a racetrack. We also had an amazing concessions stand that gave out popcorn, hot dogs, cupcakes, and ice cream cones. I even convinced the Drama Queen to dress up as a clown and make balloon animals (a life-skill that she learned just for the day). A favorite part was the carnival tickets that Sport was responsible for handing out as each guest arrived. Then each station had a sharpie and marked off the various events and food items. The kids loved it! The only bad part was when they ran out of carnival games and everybody was melting in the heat. My sweetie came to the rescue by bringing out the K’nex and having the kids build race cars in teams and then having a race. That left only about 10 minutes for them to chase around before their parents arrived.


All in all it was a pretty successful day. But we did have some trauma early on. Sport was helping my sweetie clean up the backyard and get things set up for the party when my sweetie found a small black sports car in the grass that had clearly seen better days. We have told the kids to stop taking the cars into the yard since the Dog Walker just runs over them with the lawnmower…Anyway, as a lesson, my sweetie made HIM toss the car into the dumpster. Sport was devastated! He loves cars almost as much (maybe more) than he loves his brothers and sisters and his dad had just made him throw one away!

When I heard the story I gently reminded my sweetie that those cars were Sport’s babies and maybe he needed to rescue it from the dumpster and be the hero instead of the meanie. He grumbled a bit, but headed outside to look for it. About 20 minutes later he returned. Sport and I were sitting at the kitchen table, talking about the party plans when my sweetie plopped down in a chair. We both looked at him expectantly, but he only had eyes for Sport. “Did you rescue that car out of the dumpster?” he asked accusingly. Sport averted his eyes and shrugged his shoulders. My sweetie tried again to be the hero, “Mom said I was throwing away one of your babies and I needed to get it out for you, but I can’t find it and I was wondering if maybe you knew anything about it.” Sport looked up and smiled; a lone tear still leaked from the corner of his eye. “How did you know?” he asked curiously. My sweetie stood up from the chair, mystery solved. “Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the dumpster was open and I couldn’t find the car…and then there was a chair…”

Cars of any kind are definitely Sport’s passion! On any given day he will have at least three or four cars in his pockets, some for himself and some to share. He is kind and sweet and loves to help his dad (as long as none of his cars are in danger). I’m dreading the day he learns to drive now that we are halfway there…he’ll probably have a party and invite sixteen of his closest friends…

Ask Me Anything (part 2)

***Thanks for the questions, Jenny! Jenny wants to know if it gets easier, things like births, potty training, nap-time, and discipline. Are we "master" parents now?***

I can link you to a couple of blogs I’ve already written on births and potty training, but that main question is simple…it gets easier. When I was first having kids I was so worried about EVERYTHING!

When Bossy was about 8 months old I was playing in a softball tournament. We had moved back to our hometown to re-enroll in college there and I was really excited to join my original team. Sometime I’ll tell you about my softball days, but suffice for now that I was a pretty decent short-shop. So there I am, in the middle of the field and I stop the game (pretty presumptuous, huh?!) and yell across the field to my sweetie that he needed to stop letting the baby eat dirt. I was still the youngest player on my team even though I was married now with a kid of my own and all those older and wiser moms just laughed at me.


That’s one of my sweetie’s favorite stories to tell. Now we encourage them to eat dirt! Not really, but I think that I have mellowed over the years so I’m just not so uptight about everything. I used to be super-paranoid about germs…now I just figure if they get a few germs it helps them build immunities. My sweetie used to tease me about washing my hands all the time when we first got married. I think that came from having a food-handler’s permit when I worked fast food. Of course I still wash my hands often and regularly, but I’m not obsessed with it.

The birthing process has also changed for me. Bossy and the Gym Rat came on their own several weeks early. The Drama Queen would have hibernated all winter except the doc said two weeks over was enough. Teach came right on time but weighed over 10 pounds! The Dog Walker was over 9 pounds. That is when the doc said from now on we would induce them all. That worked great until we got to Curly. My water just randomly broke…three weeks early! I wasn’t even sure it had or what I was supposed to do. Then Baby Doll came 4 ½ weeks early! Someday soon I will write the rest of the Birth Stories for you, but every birth is different and when you get into double digits, maybe yours will take less than 9 months too.

Potty training has been easy with some, hard with others. Curly trained himself. My sister trained Teach. The Dog Walker took a little longer than the others. I don’t get hung up on milestones anymore. I figure they will eventually come around and why should I beat my brains against the wall for something that will naturally happen when it’s supposed to anyway?

I have never been a stickler for nap times. I think that when a child is tired they will take a nap. Some of my kids have wanted one and others not so much… Teach STILL needs a nap every day! I know you asked about discipline. That’s a touchy subject with parents but this is my basic philosophy. I HATE spanking or otherwise raising a hand to the kids. That said, I do have to spank on rare occasion depending on the offense. My favorite way to discipline is work. Hard jobs works well for just about everyone. I’ll write you a whole blog on that subject next week.

The third baby is definitely the hardest and having older kids to help with the younger ones makes life much easier. As far as feeling like a "master" parent, most days I feel like I can barely keep all the balls in the air. It feels like I run from fire to fire and never get anything accomplished. But I have always thrived on stress and chaos. I like being the "master" planner, the supervisor, the advocate with the father. And I don’t mean that disrespectfully. I am often the go-between for the kids and their dad.

Does parenting get easier? Yes, at least today I think so, but today has been relatively quiet…no one had to go to the emergency room, I only gave 2 kids medicine, 1 breathing treatment, I only sent 6 texts during school hours to school-age kids, talked to two teachers, and I didn’t deal with any blood. It was a good day and I love being a mom! Oh yeah, there is one thing that doesn't get any easier...laundry!

Autism: Cluster 1st - 3rd grade

This is part five of this story.  If you are new and want to catch up click here.

That light never did turn on. I cried at the Kindergarten graduation. I wasn’t sure that any teacher could teach my little Dog Walker as much as "Miss Miotten." He was moved into a cluster class for 1^st grade. That meant that resource students in grades 1 through 3 were all in the same class. Many of them had communicative disorders like our son, but that was just a "catch all" for the ones who had yet to be labeled. 

 
First grade was hard! His teacher was in her last year before retirement and she was relentless. It was good for our little guy to learn to work hard. I wouldn’t necessarily throw us in the really bad parents’ category but we had not asked much of him other than learning to speak. We often gave in to his tantrums just to keep peace. We didn’t assign him chores like we did the other kids, and we rewarded him often for small achievements. His brother and sisters were not happy with this favoritism and it caused many conflicts and complaints at home. I can’t say I was sad to see that teacher go. 

His 2^nd grade teacher was younger and seemed more dedicated to the students. She insisted that it was time to test our sweet boy. The stacks of paperwork came home again. I spent hours poring over them, hoping that we would finally understand his diagnosis. As I read the tests this time, the light turned on…not for him…for me. I could clearly see where the tests were leading. His teacher must have known too, because she gave me several different tests I hadn’t seen before and they all pointed to one answer: Autism. 

My sweetie and I met with the teacher on a cold winter morning for Parent/Teacher Conferences. Our son was happy to play with the toys on the floor as we chatted. He had grown so much since he first started preschool! Now, at eight years old, he was finally starting to learn how to hold a real conversation. He still could not read facial expressions or understand simple instructions. He did not make eye contact; he looked at my mouth when I talked to him. 

As we sat in our meeting, my sweetie heard the Autism word for the first time. His first reaction was denial and I could see the anger building inside him. He did not want our son to wear a label for the rest of his life. I understood how he felt, but I could also see that just taking away the label didn’t make it not be true. We rode home in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I’m not exactly sure what he was thinking, but I was trying to figure out our next move. We really couldn’t afford a private school for Autism although there is a very good one right here in our valley. 

As it turned out, the answer was to leave him right where he was, in the cluster class. But the questions of what to do beyond that kept me awake at nights. All my hopes and dreams for my precious son were shattered…would he ever go to college? Or even graduate from high school? What about marriage, a family, a career? Were these things even possible for him? What next?  


Jump to part 6.

Autism: Theraputic Threes

It was a dark and depressing time for me. Some days the only ray of sunshine in my life was my little Princess. The Dog Walker turned three in November. In January, I finally spoke with a neighbor about her six-year-old son. I knew that he had been in the district preschool for developmentally delayed children. She gave me the number for the district office and I made the call. They found an opening for us on Valentine’s Day. 

We checked in for our appointment and they called us back to a small play area. I lugged the baby under one arm and tugged at my son with the other hand. He didn’t like strange situations. The therapist joined us several minutes later. She tried to get him to play ball. He loves to play ball and since she seemed rather harmless, he tossed the ball to her. They played for about 10 minutes before the therapist asked him some questions. He just ignored her. Five minutes later he was labeled severely developmentally delayed. He had qualified for the district preschool program and he could start school on Monday. Our lives were about to change! 



We arrived at the preschool shortly before nine. Our boy had never been alone anywhere except the neighbor’s house. He didn’t like other children or strangers, he couldn’t follow simple instructions, and he liked to take off his clothes. Of course, we were worried. We finally found his classroom and nervously stepped through the open door. His teacher and another woman greeted us. She was the speech therapist, and they would team-teach his class. They were nice and I slowly began to relax. Our son was thrilled to play with their huge collection of toys and as he climbed into the upper part of the large castle playhouse, we made a quick exit. 

I spent a miserable morning waiting for my son to come home. At 11:47, a full-size, yellow district bus pulled up in front of my house. I ran across the lawn. I was certain that he would be dying to get off that bus and get back to his normal world. He wasn’t. He was the last child to be dropped off, and he was sound asleep. Tuesday morning was rough. He was tired, and getting him out of bed had never been easy. He cried in the shower, fought when I dressed him, and refused to eat his breakfast. I had to drag him onto the bus and buckle his seat belt. I was a nervous wreck until his bus arrived at 11:51, but he was sleeping again. 

In May, I met with his teachers. I had seen many positive changes in his behavior and in his speech. I bluntly asked them when he would be completely normal, and they were hopeful that he could be mainstreamed at Kindergarten. We had no idea then that he would never be completely normal. 

Jump to part 4.

Mother-of-the-Year

 Have you ever felt like the number one candidate for the Bad Parent of the Year award? I had a day like that yesterday.  My little five-year-old Scout and I both hate getting out of our nice warm beds.  She could sleep past noon any day of the week and be perfectly fine with it.  Usually this doesn't bother me that much, but sometimes...

So yesterday at about nine I called her down for breakfast. Preschool starts at ten and I wanted her to shower first. After the third call, I stomped my way up the stairs, turned on the water, and headed for the bed. I picked her up, stripped her down, and set her in the shower. She was NOT happy! After ten minutes of voicing her complaints rather loudly, I turned off the water and wrapped her in a towel. After telling her to get dressed, I headed back downstairs to find her coat and backpack. (I don’t know how her backpack gets lost every day.)

Fifteen minutes and plenty of reminders later, I finally got her downstairs. With Baby Doll not feeling well I was definitely more annoyed then usual so I continued to lecture her as I pulled on her clothes and boots. She sniffled and sobbed while I combed her hair. When her carpool arrived the tears were still flowing. Instead of running out on her own, I had to walk her to the car.  The whole time I complained about how the baby was getting cold and she didn’t care. I must confess I breathed a sigh of relief when she was finally strapped in and on her way. 

After school neither of us were much happier. She showed me her preschool work and I cussed her for not giving her tuition check to the teacher.  She complained about lunch and I got after her for not doing her job. She offered to hold the baby, but Baby Doll was almost as ornery as me so I refused. "You don’t need me!" she stormed at me. "You don’t even love me!" That one hurt. "Of course I need you…I need you to do your job!" This was not coming out right. "I’m just trying to teach you to be responsible and do the right thing!" Oh, the bad mom points were stacking up now. Why didn’t I just put my arms around her and tell her I loved her? At that moment I was just as stubborn as she was.

Later that night, things hadn’t gotten much better. The baby still had a tummy ache and I was out of patience. It was 12:30 and everyone was in bed, including me when she came into my room. "I’m scared and I want to sleep with you," she said. "You can’t sleep with me, you can sleep in the little racecar bed," I replied. So she climbed into the toddler bed we keep next to the crib for scared or sick little ones.

Thirty seconds later she asked, "Is the door locked?" I assured her it was. "Can robbers and kidnappers get in?" she questioned. I reassured her again. She climbed out of bed. "I want to sleep in your bed," she said. "No!" I was definitely not giving in on this point. "You can sleep on the bench," I said firmly. (We have a padded bench at the foot of our bed about three feet closer than the toddler bed.  She could reach out and touch my foot if she got scared.) "I want to sleep in your bed!" she insisted. "You can sleep on the floor by the side of my bed," I suggested. "No!" she wailed. This exchange went on for about 15 minutes. The more she whined, the more stubborn I became.

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She finally made her way back to her room and climbed in bed with Crafty. I was riddled with guilt and regret. Was I just being mean?  The day had not gone well. It took me about two minutes to crawl back out of bed, find my bifocals, and head down the hall. I tripped over the dolls and toys strewn on the floor; she still hadn’t done her job.  Her eyes were closed and she appeared to be asleep.  I smoothed the hair back on that sweet little forehead. She didn’t look so stubborn now. I leaned in for a kiss and her eyes flickered open. "I love you, Honey," I whispered. "Goodnight." She sighed and rolled over. Maybe now we could both sleep.