Alex is old enough to figure out when he needs to go to bed and he's old enough to suffer the consequences in the morning if he makes a bad decision. Rachel knows she could stay up as late as Alex tends to, but she also grasps that she needs more sleep and in order to have a less stressful morning, she willingly goes to bed by 10:30. Kevin has a bedtime. He's 10; we don't negotiate with him on it. By 9:30 I expect him to have showered, brushed his teeth, put on something reasonable to sleep in, and have his scrawny ass in bed. He will "forget" to see what time it is and has to be prompted every night at nine to head for the shower; I don't blame him. It sucks to be the youngest, knowing everyone else gets to stay up, and you know everyone is waiting for you to be asleep before the real fun starts.

He drags his ass, but he doesn't usually fight it. But last night, holy shit, that kid fought bedtime. He headed for the back of the house when told it was time to get ready for bed; half an hour later Char realized she hadn't heard the shower go on, so I got up and went to see if he was all right. He was sitting in the middle of his bedroom on the floor with a comic book. Oh. I forgot.

Half an hour after that, I couldn't reach the clean towels.

Then, But I'm really hungry. Can I get a snack first?

At some point we heard water going through the pipes, and went back to the things we'd been doing. Char was absorbed in a book and I was distracted by any one of a hundred things that distracts me every day; after a long span of quiet she looked up and mentioned that Kevin hadn't come in to say goodnight. And this kid will not go to bed without getting a hug and a kiss.

So I got up again.

And found him sitting on his bedroom floor again, still wearing the clothes he'd been in an hour earlier. The sound of the shower had come from Rachel's bathroom, and she was already in bed. Oh. I was waiting for Rachel to be done so there would be hot water.

I gave him ten seconds to get up and get his ass into the bathroom; he got up.

Ten minutes later there was still no shower running, but he claimed he was "in the disposal" (indisposed) and would be in it in a minute.

Twenty minutes later he was standing in front of the mirror in his underwear, still unshowered, and it looked like he was counting freckles on his chest. Alex stepped in and told Kevin to hurry the hell up because he wanted to take a shower, too. I threatened to shove him under the water in his underwear--and that's when Kevin completely lost his shit and started crying.

And damned if the kid didn't verbally bullet list his complaints.

• It's not fair, Alex and Rachel never had to go to bed that early
  
• he wasn't dirty and didn't need a shower
  
• why were we so mean?
  
• he was hungry
  
• he was thirsty
  
• he wanted to read
  
• and on and on
  

I experienced a fundamental lack of sympathy and by then my only goal was to best this kid, get him into the shower and then into bed. I did not care about why he was still up; I cared about his blatant defiance, and the crying only pissed me off. Alex walked off, grumbling about using Rachel's bathroom, and Char came down the hall to see what the problem was. Kevin flew at her, still crying, and threw his arms around her, wailing about how mean I was being. As soon as her skin made contact with his, she looked at me and sighed, and said, He's burning up.

Way to make me look like an asshole, kid.

In the face of a 102.4 degree temperature, she decided the shower could wait, got him to brush his teeth (just by asking), dosed him with Tylenol, picked him up and tucked him into bed, and then sat with him until he was asleep.

This morning he looked just fine, but a bit sleepy. Still, we kept him home because those freckles he was counting--those were actually tiny blisters.

The kid has chicken pox.

Shit.