You know what happens when your kid is a cheerleader? She falls for the whole shebang. Totally and completely. Alexis went from absolutely no awareness about what is happening in our school district to suddenly begging to go to high school games, asking if this age group or that age group won, and all sorts of craziness.
She's got school spirit, is what I'm saying.
So it wasn't a surprise when she decided she needed to stay up late one night so she could see if the high school football team won. What was a surprise is that she very nearly made it. She pulled out that magic stay awake voodoo that she's so good at and she managed to stay up through a full three quarters of the game.
I gave her update after update, teaching her how twitter can be used to find out the current score of pretty much any sporting event. She was appropriately impressed.
But then there came a moment when she started snapping at me and saying things like, "I'M NOT SLEEPY." Both the behavior and the statement are Alexis-speak for "I AM SO TIRED AND I'M SOOO MAD ABOUT IT THAT I'M GOING TO TAKE IT OUT ON YOU."
It's a delightful thing that she has done her whole life.
So I told her WHATEVER and ignored the snapping, knowing full well that she would be asleep in less than ten minutes.
She was.
(Max always sleeps with her, so of course he adapted and climbed up on the couch with her instead of climbing into her loft.)
Alexis woke up on her own about an hour after she "wasn't sleepy," looked around with the face of disorientation and confusion, and immediately demanded to know the score.
Her team had won.
Alexis' reaction was to simply say "OK" and then roll back over and go back to sleep. It was hardly the fireworks and jazz hands that I was expecting.
I was confused.
It turns out that all I had to do was wait. Twenty minutes after Alexis fell back asleep, she apparently started to dream about sports and all of that stuff because she started to cheer in her sleep. Literally. Her arms were going and her mouth was moving and encouraging "we're number one" words were falling all over the place.
When I lived in Spain in high school, I knew it was time to go home when I started to dream in Spanish. What does it mean when someone starts to speak cheer in their sleep?