In bed last night...

So I have a bedtime routine. Seth goes to bed around 7, we eat dinner, watch our "shows", hang out, you know. Then at 11, I go to bed, pump, watch Scrubs, and pass out. Seth has been sleeping through the night for the most part so I have been sleeping straight through to morning.

So. Imagine my surprise when I am woken from a deep sleep by someone caressing my cheek. "What the..." I say, getting ready to knock John off the bed for waking me up when I am completely exhausted. Just before I do, I realize that it is not John.

It is my four year old daughter, caressing my cheek gently and saying "Mama, I need to be with you. I need to spend time with you."

Oh no. Not that...not the 'I need you' ploy. I am a sucker for that one.

So I say she can stay, as long as she goes straight to sleep. "OK, Mama, thank you."

I finally fall back asleep. What feels like two seconds later, I hear groaning next to me. Loud, loud groaning.

"I am so hungry! I am HUNGRY! I am huuuuuuuuuungry!"

Apparently, Ava is hungry. I try to put her off. I tell her just to go to sleep for a few minutes, thinking if she falls asleep she'll forget how hungry she is.

"But Mama. I am STAAAARVING!"

At this point, I think that she is actually loud enough to wake up her brother. Her deaf brother. Yes. She is loud enough to wake her brother who is so deaf a jet plane sounds like a whisper to him.

I am tired. I don't care. She gets a piece of bread in our bed, which subsequently turns into millions of tiny crumbs in our bed, which irritate me to no end. But I am tired! I am so tired I know that I can make myself go back to sleep, even when there is a lanky four year old laying diagonally across my bed and demon crumbs everywhere.

When I wake again, there is screeching. And screaming. And crying.

"My sword! She is bending my sword!"

"He is in my SPACE"

[Infant Crying. Loudly. Remember, he has no volume control.]

What? No way. I slowly open my eyes and look at the bed.

There cannot be five people in my bed, right? This is just a bad dream. It is not even fully LIGHT out yet! This is a bad dream. I take inventory. I am in bed. Next to me is Ava. Next to Ava is Jace. They are wrestling over a foam sword. He is also wearing his superhero cape. Next to Jace is John, who is apparently pretending he cannot hear the fighting going on next to him. Next to John is Seth, who started out the evening in his bassinet, so I'm a little confused at his current location, next to John. Seth is yelling loudly and rooting furiously in the general area of John's arm.

It is not yet 6 am. And apparently, it is time to get up. Thank God we have a king size bed!