When the Kids Sleep

If, would be a better title really, “If Kids Sleep.” If I were to finish the sentence it would probably be something like “…adults weep tears of pure joy.”  Most of us, when we were very small, slept like tiny little tornadoes. Our nocturnal repose was less a picturesque time of peaceful slumber, and more like close quarters combat with the blankets and pillows. At some point most of us grow out of this…some of us later than others. Honestly, it’s a wonder I ever got married, but that’s a different comic strip and a different post altogether. Before we grow out of this as children, we present our parents with ample opportunity for photos they will laugh at and share with friends until we’re old enough to be mortified by it. Will that stop parents from showing the photos? No. They’ll keep going back to that picture of you sleeping half in and half out of a kitchen drawer again and again until it loses its power over you. When it stops working, like the mischievous imps everyone becomes upon having children, they’ll find some other means to torture you.  Such is the prerogative of parenthood.

Our kids are no different. This strip came to me pretty much as you see it here when my wife shared a picture of how she found our son sleeping one morning. He moves around enough in his sleep that it’s a wonder he doesn’t wake up, and immediately need to take a nap for being physically exhausted. It’s not really that surprising that he still rolls his way out of bed from time to time. It happened often enough that we kept a pile of thick blankets laid out next to his toddler bed for him to fall into. On the morning of this strip’s origin my wife had gone in to the room to check on him, or wake him up to go to preschool, or something, I forget the exact circumstances. She found that he’d…sort of fallen out of bed. From the waist down he was in bed, sleeping perpendicular to the mattress. From the waist up he was lying off the bed, with his head on the floor, turned to the side, sound asleep. If that sounds weird, it is. I’ve seen the photographic evidence.

I liked the idea of my wife, Mildly Sensational, walking into the room and finding the kids sleeping in a way that would be disturbing and hard to forget. The comic came together quickly from there. Enjoy!