The Sleepover

Since starting pre-school back in the Fall, Lukas has occasionally received invitations to do sleepovers at the homes of other 3-year-olds in his class.

 I'm pretty sure these invitations were not initiated with the approval of the other kids parents.  That's because, let's face it, 3-year-olds are not prime candidates to be comfortable, let alone fall asleep, in a foreign environment with the lights out.

Mrs. LIAYF and I would tactfully explain to Lukas each time he would relay one of these invitations to us, that he would have to wait "Until he was older" to have a sleepover with any of his little buddies.

Well, that all changed Saturday night as we were hosting our visiting friends, who used to live nearby and whose 3 year old son is also one of our sons best friends.  We only had one spare bedroom, so we decided to let both boys sleep in Lukas' room.  We told Lukas that he was finally going to get to do a sleepover.  He was pretty excited about it.

By the time we had met up with our friends, had dinner and playtime, finished up movie night for the boys and got them ready for bed, it was nearly 10:00 and both boys were a bit wound up as we laid them both down in sleeping bags on Lukas' bedroom floor.  We told them to be quiet and try to go to sleep.  We didn't have high expectations.

Our low expectations were well founded, because no sooner than we had reached the bottom of the stairs, than the thumping started from the room.  After giving them a few minutes to goof around together while we chatted, Mrs. LIAYF and the other mother went up to tell them to go to sleep, with his friends mother ultimately laying down with her son to help him go to sleep. 

When the mother came down she smiled as she let us know how sweet Lukas had been.  Apparently he had rubbed the back of his friend, telling him that "It's okay, if any monsters come they will all be friendly." and "If you get scared of the dark I can grab my tiger flashlight to turn on", echoing some of the things that Mrs. LIAYF tells him before leaving the room each night.

But as we were all smiling about that story, the door once again opened upstairs. It was Lukas.  It was also my turn to go talk to him about going to sleep.   "He's really asleep!" Lukas exclaimed as I entered the room, looking over at his friend as I laid him back down.  He then leaned over and kissed his buddy, who didn't move an inch, on the forehead before turning to me with his hands outstretched and palms up.

"See?!" 

"Yeah, he sure is" I said as I hugged and tucked my little guy back into his covers.  And with that it wasn't long before Lukas finally drifted off to sleep, which both boys did until 6:30 the next morning.

We all could have used more sleep, but  realistically that was as good an outcome as we could have hoped for from his first ever sleepover.

So tell me.  At what age did your kids start having sleep overs?