The things we do for love.....

No, I don't mean the song by 10CC, I mean what we won't do for our children.

We went away camping this past weekend (weather could have been a little better, but overall, a fun time was had by all) and on the last night, and probably the coldest, our main propane tank ran out of propane. No propane means no furnace in the camper. Which means c-c-c-old!

We always have 2 tanks at the ready, and Greg wanted to go outside and hook up the other one, but I said not to bother because it was after midnight for crying out loud. I couldn't ask him to get out of our warm bed and do that. Once we're asleep, we won't notice the cold I said. Remember - he offered.

NEWSFLASH: Hindsight is 20-20.

Being the somewhat paranoid parent that I am, and not afraid to admit to it, I decided that I should sleep on the lower bunk with Benjamin to keep him warm and to be there should (heaven forbid!) his covers inch their way off of him. He sleeps in the coldest part of the camper because we get the upper bunkhead.

So I crawled into bed with Ben but before I did, I had the forethought to layer up because the only blanket I had was this fleece thing that is so thin it doesn't deserve to be called fleece. I lay there in my thermal long sleeved shirt, my flannel pj bottoms tucked into my sox and my fleece camping jacket. At first I'm pretty warm and I'm thinking "this will be just fine". Benjamin is curled up warm under his quilt and hardly moves at all so not even his little feet will get cold.

About an hour goes by and I'm now thinking "um.....yah....it's a little chilly in here", so I tuck my feet into Greg's hoodie that is laying at the foot of the bed. Then around 3:30am I wake up almost completely numb from the waist down, except for an ache in my hips, legs and feet like I've never felt before, and shivering. Plus I have to pee. Like a racehorse. But I'm going to hold it because the cold air outside of my cocoon will surely make my body shatter and I can't really feel my feet anyway. What a conundrum I am in. So I just lay there, trying as hard as I could to take my mind off the fact that I have to pee, and hey - I could pee myself and not know it because I can't feel anything! This thought made me giggle to myself a little. I try to sleep, but of course my attempt is futile. I think about crawling back into bed with Greg who seems to be as snug as a bug in a rug to get warm (which I found out later that morning he was not) and to ask if he could go outside and change the tank. But I didn't want to admit that I was a wuss and couldn't handle the cold. So instead I reached around to find my little man, all toasty and warm in his own little cocoon, his sweet early morning breath stinkin' up the joint (or was that mine?!) sleeping peacefully, completely unaware that I have sacrificed sleep, the lower half of my body and my bladder to keep him warm. Confirmation that I am so in love with him washes over me and I just smile in the dark.

These really are the things we do for love.