When I sleep, I like to scoot down away from the headboard to the end of the bed — just enough so that my feet hang off the end. This wouldn’t be noteworthy, except that I’m pretty short and accomplishing this means scooting WAY down. My dad does this, too, but he’s taller and that makes a difference.

Mike doesn’t mind. Even though this means it’s practically impossible for him to have the covers pulled up very high. When we were first married, he’d sit up in the middle of the night and look for me and not find me.

He’s been out of town, and lately I’ve had the not -so-restful joy of sharing the bed with whichever child wandered in. Yeah, yeah, I should take them back to their own beds. The problem with that is then I wake up and the whole point of sleeping is sleeping. So I let them stay.

Seth-4yr is the least accommodating of my preferred sleeping arrangement. He wants to be way up high near the headboard and also remain covered with blankets up to his ears. Which would mean I’d be totally covered, including my head.

I have a thing about breathing. I like it. So that doesn’t really work.

I wait until he goes back to sleep and then yank him downwards by the ankles. Gently. Gently yank the child by his ankles. Surprisingly, this works.

A few mornings ago, it was around 4 a.m. and I grabbed his arm as he started to sneak out of the bed. “Stay,” I whispered.

“O-tay.”  And he curled his hand into mine.

I was almost back to sleep when he asked, “Is it because you do not want to be all uh-yone?”

Uh-yone is how Seth-4yr says ‘alone.’

And that was a sweet question. Hilarious, but sweet, and pretty thoughtful for a four year old. At 4 am.  It woke me completely up, it was so funny. As if.

“Seth-4yr, I would LOVE to be all uh-yone with my feet hanging off the bottom of the bed and the covers how I like them, but I do not want you getting up and waking up all your brothers at 4 in the morning. So stay here, please, and go back to sleep.”

And he did.

And then I ankle-yanked him  - gently – and went back to sleep, too, thinking about how I have probably never been as sweet or thoughtful at such an hour, as Seth-4yr.

Planned, strategic ankle-yanking as evidence.