A few weeks ago, in my motherly blog, I toasted my crowning achievements of summer.  One being making it through the entire break without hosting a single sleepover.

Now is the moment when I eat my words.

When I wrote that blog, there was no reason to assume I wouldn't achieve my perfect, no sleepover record.  As the weeks of summer dwindled down to days, I could taste victory.  The Saturday afternoon before that first Monday of school, I was ready to celebrate.

The unified strategy my best friend and I had launched to prevent sleepovers had been working beautifully.  All summer long, the never-intended-to-be-fulfilled words of "just wait until next weekend" or "let's wait for a day when I don't have to work in the morning" worked without fail.  While we were more than willing to host each other's children with other neighborhood friends from dawn to dusk, we were addicted to the send home aspect of our arrangement.

But less than 24 hours after writing that fateful sentence, while prematurely basking in my near perfect glory, everything changed.  I caved.

Funny, I didn't cave because I was tired of the constant badgering by Little Guy and Big Guy.  It was actually quite the opposite.  They were so used to me saying "no" to sleepover requests, they had stopped asking.

In a strange twist, I sabotaged my own plan.  For as that Saturday afternoon faded into evening, I got that feeling.

You know the one.  It's the feeling we get when we don't want to do something.  Yet we know that if we simply chose to do it, we'd be making not necessarily a right choice or a wrong choice, but a nice choice.

It's that feeling we get when we know the anticipation is worse than the actual; it's committing that hard.  

It's that feeling we get when the mother in us once again wins over the woman we try to be. 

For weeks, the woman in me used the old "it's not you, it's me" line on Big Guy and Little Guy. I explained how although I  loved them, I loved a house that was quiet after 10:00 P.M.  a little more.  I'd  rather not have to peek my head into the den at 12:25 A.M. and remind them to go to sleep, for I liked my own sleep far too much and did not want to be interrupted.

I'd prefer to walk toward the kitchen to turn on the coffee maker without stumbling over a mass of sleeping bags and finally sleeping bodies.  And I didn't want to feel the pressure to make the obligatory sleepover breakfast of homemade pancakes, eggs and bacon.  Selfish?  Perhaps.  But wasn't I allowed that indulgence once in a while?

But as I watched the kids play, the mother in me couldn't help but take over.  She contemplated how simple it would be to make the boys' summer.  To grant one simple wish.  A wish that would allow them to stay up extra late. Eat a little more junk.  Play DS download way past bedtime.  Use flashlights under blankets as they giggle, intentionally burp , pass gas and occasionally wrestle each other for space. 

I knew what was going to happen next.

My hand reached for the phone.  I dialed the number.  And I spoke the words I vowed to avoid.  I told my best friend that I'd take the boys at my house for the night.  Knowing full well that her own mother voice was talking and that she would have stepped up and offered if I hadn't.

I can't say I was surprised.  This sort of thing happens all the time.  For once we add "mother" to our list of credentials, it overshadows every other role we play.  She always wins. 

Illyse appears Thursdays on TriangleMom2Mom.