What the hell was that?

I’m spending a few days as a guest of my in-laws at a timeshare condo. It’s a nice enough place. Like a two-and-a-half star hotel with no room service or maid service. I love having a kitchen with dishes, pots and pans, and a dishwasher. I don’t love the thin walls and ceilings.

Yes. Ceilings.

And, presumably, floors.

My first night here, I stayed up late to watch the season finale of “The Affair” on my computer with headphones. Above me, I kept hearing a “boom.” It was not the revelation of who really killed Scotty Lockhart. It wasn’t even the OTHER revelation of who killed Scotty Lockhart. I’ve narrowed down the upstairs booms to three possibilities: a portable bowling alley, moving furniture, dropping dumbbells.

Last night, it was a different boom. This boom was followed immediately by the sound of Pringles crying. If I were to start a support group for parents of children who fell out of unfamiliar beds (POCWFOOUB International), I’d have a million members on day one.

Pringles is fine. Scared, but not hurt. I’m a bit on edge.

I have to say, I am also in awe of my lizard brain right now. Anything that’s allowed to go through my higher level brain functions will encounter “Do we have to do something right now?” pretty early on. When I became a mom, my brain began giving orders to my body completely in spite of my procrastination and laziness. I have caught babies rolling off of beds, cups pre-spill, and toddlers mid-toddle. Children seem hell-bent on self-destruction.

Last night, my mommy lizard brain heard “Boom!” before my conscious mind processed the information, and it made my feet hit the ground running before my eyes opened. I had Pringles scooped up and back in bed before I’d woken up from the dead sleep I was in. I was still having the nightmare about catching students plagiarizing their final exams.

I asked the all important question:

“More hurt or more scared?”

Pringles downshifted from crying to whimpering, and appeared to give the matter grave thought. Her big, wet eyes shone in the nightlight. Under my hand, her heart pounded a mile a minute. My own pulse beat in unison.

“Scared,” she finally admitted. “Cuddle with me, Mommy?”

I stayed in her narrow bed, ass hanging off the side, until she was asleep again. That’s another Mommy Superpower I have besides the Lizard Brain. I can defy gravity half out/half in tiny beds.

Every mother or dad who would potentially join POCWFOOUB International already knows what I did next.

I rounded up every pillow in the condo and put them in a protective perimeter around Pringles’ bed.

I don’t know if dads have this same brain mechanism or not. Odie either doesn’t, or is so confident that I do it allows his Dad Brain to sleep in R2D2-style low-power mode.

“Morning, honey. What was that noise last night and where are the couch pillows?”