sleepover

 

 

 

 

 

We've been trying something different.  At the instigation of our oldest kid, we tried having sleepovers in Charlie's room with mixed results.  The first effect is to make reading a heck of a lot more challenging for the parent in charge.  The first books read really just serve as background noise while Charlie repeatedly face plants on the blow up mattress inflated for Schuyler.  But they clearly have a blast!  And after a couple of false start nights, they seem to be getting into the swing of it i.e. Charlie has stopped keeping Schuyler up until 9pm talking and jumping on her and now they pretty much go to sleep.  There are few things more delicately beautiful than seeing your two kids sound asleep side by side... it's kind of like when someone stops mowing the lawn next door and you're left with a silence you didn't know you were missing.
It was also the beginning of Chapters.  This is kind of an homage to my brother, Ward, who used to tell Will and I stories he invented with us as the protagonists.  They were simply amazing stories - funny, intricate, and stuck with me as one of the best parts of my childhood.  So I'm trying to do the same.  The current one is told in Chapter instalments and centres around Charlie and Schuyler jumping in a puddle in the front yard and sinking down into an underwater world where they are mermaids and befriend an octopus named (what else?) Otto and then there's the antagonist, the Sea King, who keeps capturing Magic.  Charlie can talk to any animal and Schuyler can turn invisible and it's all pretty exciting and magical and completely creatively exhausting to generate night after night.  I don't know how Ward did it but I'm very grateful he did.