To Sleep Perchance to Pee

Pie is a three year old. Pie has a head cold. So using the transitive property, you can correctly induce that Pie is the devil incarnate.

Last night Pie woke up with a lovely cough at about midnight. But instead of whining about her cough, she decided to go a less obvious route: "Moommmmmy! Moooommmmmy! I peed in my Pull-Up!"

As you may very well know, peeing in a Pull-Up, well, not a big deal. That's what they're there for. That's why Pie doesn't sleep in underwear. But being the kind parents we are, we offered to change her Pull-Up. So we got the footie pjs and the Pull-Up off. And that's where the fun began. Pie decided she didn't want to put a Pull-Up back on. But she sleeps in our bed. Pretty much on top of us. And we weren't going to risk a Pull-Up free night.

We beg. She screams her head off. We plead. She screams her head off. We negotiate. She screams her head off. It's now close to 1 a.m. Finally, I say, "Look, Pie, this Pull-Up has to go on. You can put it on nicely. We can put it on like it's a diaper. Or we can put it on by force. Your choice."

Obviously she picked the only sensible answer. "By fooooorrrrrce!! Put it on by force."

So we did. Which ensued in more screaming. I'm pretty sure our neighbors (yea, screaming child in an apartment building!) had the phone books opened to DSS and were poised to dial.

Adam tried to work his magic. "Pie, everyone is sleeping. You need to sleep, too."

But that Hah-vahd MBA taught Adam nothing. Because Pie outsmarted him. "But the people driving outside--I can see their headlights--they're not sleeping!"

"Pie," I told her, "they're not sleeping because you are keeping them awake. They're driving away to find some place quieter. If you'd just go to sleep, they could come back and go to sleep."

And damn if she didn't. And tonight? Tonight she was dosed with Triaminic Nighttime. If you can't beat them, drug them!