True Fuss Tales: Fuss Free

I had a strange morning.
Thought various machinations, Fuss & the Wife ended up spending the night at Uncle Timmy & Auntie Burl's place Friday night. We came for a play date and stayed for the BBQ'ed ribs. Fuss refused an afternoon nap and by dinner was a delirious trip mine being set off by randomly changing circumstances (there's plastic fruit on the ground! the garage door is shut! the garage door is open! etc etc) so we put him down in their bed at temporal no man's land of 7pm.

Fuss isn't much for a schedule at bed time. Attempt putting him down before he's good and you'd best be prepared for an exactingly staged reenactment of the Battle of the Somme. And oftentimes even if he is ready he still fights like a badger, out of sheer contrary cussedness.
Generally, 8pm is as early as he ever goes to sleep. 9pm is the usual, 10pm is no stranger and 11pm has its own set of bath towels in the linen closet.

So as the evening wound down our course was uncertain. Experience makes us wary of moving him once he's asleep, even a short distance. Sometimes it's okay, sometimes he wakes up and however exhausted he is, that's it- he's up for the duration.

My favorite was the time I toted him from car seat to bed completely passed out over my shoulder like a tranquilized gazelle, and as I ever so carefully and gently laid him down he startled awake at the touch of the matress and began a mad scramble for the foot of the bed.
He wasn't even awake, his eyes were fluttering and rolling around, but the HELL with this lying down in a big soft bed surrounded by all his satiny blankies, he had things to do!

So we ended up leaving him be, everyone shifting their sleeping arrangements around him like one of those puzzles with the plastic sliding tiles. I came home and spent one of the literal handful of Fuss free nights of the last several years.

Not that it amounted to much since he's got me trained like a champion Westminster hound. I got home, packed the orders for the next day, read a chapter of my book and promptly passed out. Neither did I sleep in, popping awake at the usual 7am, the absence of a tiny heel to the forehead or the dulcet serenade WAKE UP DADA WAKE UP DADA! as disruptive and shocking in its own way as the expected result.