I have come to be a big fan of sports on the other side of the globe.  Or, basically, any sporting event that I can watch live at night.  Starting at 7:30 pm is OK, but 8:30 or 9:30 is better.  At these times, I end up really enjoying events that may otherwise not be on my sporting radar.  The Australian (tennis) Open is the first that comes to mind.  Sitting on the couch, bored, and flipping stations to see if Princess Bride or My Cousin Vinny is playing on one of the stations I pay entirely too much money for, only to accidentally stumble across live tennis, is an almost euphoric feeling - especially if Maria Sharapova or Eugenie Bouchard happens to be on the card.  Just last year, I also got really into the stretch of Australian golf tournaments, as well as just about any European Tour event in Southeast Asia, in the winter. This also holds true for college football games being played in Hawaii (if they happen to have an interesting opponent - sorry Colorado State), the Tournament of Champions and Sony Open (also in Hawaii) in January, and, of course, most recently, the Presidents Cup in Korea.

In some cases there are two reasons for the added excitement.  This is not true of the Presidents Cup, but for many of the others, I may have forgotten about it until the very moment that it's on.  In which case, the feeling is not unlike the one you feel when you wake up dreading another grind, only to belatedly realize that it's Saturday!  The other reason is the big one, and it is the main reason for this story; the kids have gone to bed.  Let me repeat that last part: The. Kids. Have. Gone. To. Bed.  Those of you that have kids know this beautiful silence very well.  It is all too fleeting and it only occurs twice a day on weekdays, and once on the weekend.  Every Monday through Friday morning there is the pleasant drive to work after dropping the last one off at school, and every day of the week, there is that moment that occurs sometime between 8 pm and 9:30 pm   when you get to walk down the stairs, plop down on the couch, and take a deep breath that you can actually hear.  No matter how tired you are at that point, there is no way you're going to go to bed and miss this!  Let's see what's on??  YES!!  The Presidents Cup is just starting to get good!

Our kids are pretty good about sleeping through the night at this point (ages 6, 4, 10 mos) so the debacle of last Friday night came as a bit of a surprise.  As the morning session foursomes were winding down, sometime between 11 and midnight I think, our daughter (the 4 year old) came into our room and announced that her bed is no longer comfortable for her, and proceeded to climb into ours.  If she's tired and stationary, this isn't a problem, however, when she's restless and performing karate kicks on your back, this is very much a problem.  So I took her back to her room and laid with her until she fell back asleep.  Problem solved, for now.

Round 2 wasn't much later because, surprise daddy, the bed is still uncomfortable.  This time our little guy decided to wake up as well, and my wife was soothing him ... also in our bed.  Now there are four of us in there.  It's a California king, sure, but come on people?!?!  My daughter is, again, thrashing about but I'm "saved" from having to deal with this because the baby needs to be walked around.  (I think we're somewhere in the 2 or 3 o clock hour at this point)  The bright side is that Friday night was the night that they played two sessions in the Presidents Cup, so we went downstairs, drank some milk, and watched Spieth and Reed wrap up their fourball match in the dark to maintain the U.S.' slim one-point lead.

After I got him back in his bed I tried, briefly, to fit back into mine, only to find my daughter still doing cartwheels or spinning back kicks, or who knows what else.  Well you know what young lady?  Two can play at that game.  You can have my 7' long bed with the down comforter and many many thread count sheets, and I will take the twin bed with the purple comforter, scattered Barbie Dolls and the Elsa themed pillowcase, thank you very much.  Many might say she won, but for the last two hours of that night - I slept in peace.  OK, that's a lie - 90 minutes later my older son realized I was in their room instead of his sister and so he came down and joined me in her bed for the last 30 or so minutes.

Luckily for me, like I mentioned, that is not an every day occurrence.  Thankfully, it's rare enough that I deem it worthy to be written about.  We were proactive and did make an attempt to fix the uncomfortable bed problem that day ... by switching out mattresses with her brother.   He did make a comment the first night but none since, so I think it's worked.

All parents probably have very similar versions of the same story, and the best part about it is there is always a happy ending.  No matter how freaking annoying they can be at night, they are angels when they're asleep and everything is great again by morning.  But those nights - ugh, those nights!  As a parent, your world may revolve around your kids, but sometimes it's nice when there is an eclipse.