Surely the gods are punishing me for once having mocked co-sleeping. (Yes it turns out there's a term for, as Miel says, having a toddler kick you in the head all night.) In order to keep Jackson from (a) falling off the bed or (b) falling out the window, we put him between us at night. The result, apart from husband-cuddling withdrawal, is that Jackson nudges me so far toward the edge of the bed that I have learned to sleep quite soundly teetering on a three-inch strip of mattress. Or else he goes the other way and drapes himself all over Jack quote like a cheap suit unquote.

Jackson is pure lover in the morning, he is going to make some/dozens of men/women very happy, waking up with a drowsy, smiling, sweet-breathed little chunk who puts his arm around your neck and whispers, "I got you." In the night, however, Jackson processes the intensities of the day, resulting, typically, in him yelling, in the dead of night, at someone only he can see, "That's MY airplane!" and punching me in the mouth. The other night, for example, a roundhouse to the jaw brutally snatched me away from a large stadium where thousands of people were cheering as teams telepathically pushed stately, elaborate triremes around, big wooden boats that floated twenty feet off the ground and lightly bumped each other, and I realized that everyone else watching was a Super Being who could perceive things in all twelve dimensions, and there was far more complexity to this psychic boat maneuvering than I, with my puny three-dimensions-max mind, could appreciate. It was like in Defending Your Life, where Rip Torn is all smug because he uses 48% of his brain and Albert Brooks only uses 3%, and they're eating lunch together and Rip has a plateful of what looks like hamster manure mixed with spinach, and Albert tries a forkful and then gags, because he just doesn't have the wattage to appreciate Big Brain Food. Bumping Boats was a Big Brain Sport, and I was Albert Brooks, minus the punishing self-doubt and penis.

Speaking of penises (and to cleverly dovetail them with our original subject), Jackson made it through potty training like a Big Brain, but guess what? Guess where the occasional accident still happens? Right! At night! In bed! It pays to have a sense of humor about waking up with a damp little boy. As Jack said, "It's the first time I've woken up in somebody else's pee."