Di-dee!

Last week, Nana came and stayed with us, and we let her have Sam's room so she has space to put all her Nana-type stuff. We have a single bed in Noah's room, so we had Sam sleep there.

We've done this a couple of times before, and it's turned OK. But those times, it hadn't yet occurred to Noah to wake up and find out what was going on in the middle of the night.

You can see where I'm going with this.

This time, it was a nightmare. The kids go to bed about the same time, but they can't go to sleep in the same room because they keep talking and playing with each other. So we'd put Sam down, then try to rock Noah and give him a bottle downstairs until Sam fell asleep.

But by then, Noah was overtired, and he had trouble getting settled. So we'd lay him down, and instead of face-planting on the crib mattress, stuffing the two fingers into his mouth and drifting peacefully off to Dreamland, he hollered.

This, as you might imagine, woke Sam up.

So I tried taking Noah to my bed and laying with him until he fell into a sound sleep and I could transfer him to his room. This seemed to work well the first night, and I went back to my room feeling smug and like an uber-smart mom.

About a half-hour later, however, I heard some noise on the baby monitor. He wasn't crying, but I couldn't figure out what he was doing. So I went over and pushed the button to see him (thank goodness for BIG giftcards to Toys 'R Us, which let us get one of these cool things).

There he was, standing up in his crib, hanging onto the top rail, leaning slightly forward and practically whispering, "Di-dee! Di-dee!" toward Sam's bed.

When he sees Sissy, you must understand, that means it's time to play. Even if it's the middle of the night, and she looks like she's unconscious, that doesn't mean she can't get up and play.

I ran my butt over to his room and snagged him out of his crib before he could wake her. By then, he was wide awake -- thanks to the "nap" he had gotten -- and couldn't understand why I was so boring and sleepy.

That was one of those nights when he was darn lucky he's so cute.