MSG-ed

MSG. Not the abbreviation for 'message' but 'mono sodium glutamate'.

Last night, the whole family was msg-ed by, we highly suspect, the french fries we had at Bennigan's. We quite enjoy the food at Bennigan's and find ourselves there every fortnight or so. Last evening, we had dinner there and ordered the usual. Johan had his Fajita beef burger, I had the fish wrap and Johan's mom, chicken kebabs. Sera had her share from Johan's mom and me. And the one common thing we had were the fries. We left Bennigan's full and satisfied.

The trouble started in the middle of the night. Sera woke up twice between the time she fell asleep and about 2-ish in the morning. When Johan attended to her the second time, I was also awake and just couldn't go back to sleep. I tried for about 30 minutes, gave up and went down to get something to drink. I got myself some soda water and stole a a chocolate-yoghurt cookie from Sera's stash and walked back up to our room. At the same time, Johan walks down. We meet halfway at the stairs and start having this strange conversation about not being able to sleep and we concluded the fries must have had MSG in it. Ah hah! We solved the mystery of our sleeplessness. ha ha. So I waited for him while he decides that the cure for overcoming MSG is a bowl of ice cream and soda water. The two of us finally sneak up the stairs, not wanting to wake Sera or his mom up. We reach the top of the stairs and who pops her head out of the room? Sera, of course!

She looked at us. A little surprised to see her parents together, just outside her room. She gives us a wide grin and we couldn't help but invite her to sleep with us. We understood ... she had been msg-ed too. Thus her sleeplessness.

So the three of us positioned ourselves unto our already too small bed. Johan eats his ice cream secretly, while I try to pat her to sleep. She doesn't sleep of course. I then decide to finish my little snack and actually feel a little better after it. So Johan and I were actually feeling less msg-ed and ready to sleep but Sera was super awake. She decided to go on this chanting ...

Sera: "Papa ... Mama ... Sera!"
Me: "Sera, please sleep ... "
Sera: "Papa ... mama ... Sera!"
Johan: "Sera .... SLEEP!"
Sera: "Mama ... Sera ... Paaa paaaaa!"
Me and Johan: "Sera ... SLEEP!"
Sera: "Mama ... Papa ... SLEEEEEEEEP!"

This chanting went on for a while. Then she does this commando crawl over our bed, decides to start reading her books in the dark and plays with a balloon she found in our room. This lasted for about 40 mins and finally she came back on our bed, and fell asleep ... exhausted.

Needless to say, Sera and I woke up late this morning. And I also found out that Johan's mom had a difficulty time sleeping last night. What a night!