Chuck Norris and the Friendly Ghost

Roper is like Chuck Norris; he doesn’t sleep, he waits. 

For most of his life, I’ve been worried that Roper doesn’t require as much sleep as normal babies.  He would get maybe eight hours a night and wasn’t really interested in napping.  But in the last couple months he’s been giving sleep a solid effort with positive results.  As in, his parents haven’t killed him.

I have recently come to realize that Roper is FAKING sleep.  He’s in there waiting.  I guess staying alive is a pretty big payoff for playing quietly in his crib for a couple of hours.  This is probably the time during which he goes over the logistics of his short and long term Evil Plans.

Roper’s room is right above our living room.  Last night, as we watched YET ANOTHER nerdy documentary about space travel, we heard a bunch of thumping around as if a grown man were jumping up and down. In Roper’s room.  Outside of his crib.  So, Toby and I did what we always do, looked at each other blankly and turned the volume up on the movie. 

But it kept happening, and sounded somewhat menacing.  We turned on the baby monitor and (what, you keep yours on?  Here’s your parenting trophy.  Yay!) EERY SILENCE.  So we went back to watching the movie.   It must have been our apartment neighbors moving their furniture, right?

As Toby headed up to bed and passed Roper’s room, I heard a very enthusiastic “HI!” from our son.  He was in his crib, wide awake and very happy.  I sent Toby to bed and brought Roper down to watch cartoons.  The cartoons that are bearable only because of the token adult humor injected in them.  After an hour, Roper was still happy as a clam, wide awake and talking up a storm. 

I put him in his crib.

You guys, that kid was up past 1am — laughing and talking and jumping in his bed.  And he was up when I got up.  And he’s almost always awake when I get up.  If I sneak in his room he’ll do a belly flop into his crib and try to pretend he was sleeping. 

Toby was asleep during Roper’s big party last night, but I had to wake him up to tell him that his son was playing with a ghost.  Yep, a ghost.  Because after 9pm, I am irrational and enjoy creeping myself out.  But also, because I’ve been convinced since we moved in that we are sharing the house with someone.  Someone who plays with Roper’s toys at night and doesn’t put them back where he found them.  Probably the same someone who uses all of the toilet paper and leaves me with nary a square.

So I wake up Toby to tell him I have the heebs from listening to his son talk, laugh and play with a ghost all night. He humors me for a bit and then mumbles something like (and this is a rough translation), “Don’t piss off the ghost because he’s doing us a favor” and rolls back over.  Commence snoring.

So there you have it.  We have a friendly ghost who entertains Roper all night and/or my son is Chuck Norris, biding his time. 

Speaking of…here are some of my favorite Chuck Norris facts.

These are good too.