Last night around 3 am Jake came wandering into our bedroom ranting. For some reason he has a habit of complaining about things to himself, out loud, in this intense tone of voice that can be both annoying and funny at the same time. At 3 am it’s just annoying.

He came over to my side of the bed and said “Mommy, Ace won’t look at me.”

Huh?

I probably should explain who Ace is. Ace is a stuffed leopard and Jake’s best friend. He rarely goes anywhere without him, even inside the house. He definitely won’t sleep without him. Apparently last night Ace was not cooperating.

I got up and followed Jake to his room and he crawled back into bed and said “see, Ace won’t look at me.” I looked down and next to Jake, with his head on Jake’s pillow, was the uncooperative little culprit who happened to be staring right at Jake, that is, if a stuffed leopard can be described as staring.

Fool as I was (half asleep and hoping that Abby wouldn’t wake up to eat…or maybe that she would since I was up already) I tried to explain to him that Ace was looking at him. He insisted that Ace keeps looking away.

I was dumbfounded….I couldn’t come up with an explanation wide awake that would be able to change his goofy mood let alone half asleep. I told him to wait a little bit and maybe Ace would look at him later and I left and went back to bed.

A little while later Jake returned to our room, ranting again, with Ace in his hands and said “Ace still won’t look at me.”

Oh brother….

He then said “crack his neck Mommy.”

What….

“Grandma cracks his neck.”

“Jake, what are you talking about?”

“To make him look at me, Grandma cracks his neck.”

At that point, behind me, came muffled laughter and although I tried to hold it back, I just busted up laughing.

All that did was make Jake more determined….”CRACK HIS NECK!”

So, I began twisting the dumb leopards neck only to be met with “NO! crack his NECK!”

At that point Ed grabbed the leopard by the head and started bending it backwards. The only thing I could think of was that I was sure to be forced to sew the poor stupid thing tomorrow because what we were doing was sure to make holes in it since it is quite worn.

Jake then grabbed Ace, made a frustrated boy grunt, and left the room, still ranting…I’m sure much of it had to do with how stupid his parents are for not knowing how to crack the neck of a stuffed leopard. He went back into his room and continued his rants until Ed bribed him by asking him if he wanted to sleep downstairs on the couch.

Seemed to work…we didn’t hear from him until 7 am.

I forgot to ask him what exactly he wanted last night, but I have a feeling he doesn’t even remember doing it.