Bedtime Bedlam        

I’m usually pretty calm for the first hundred hours of bedtime, even with all the last-minute drink/snack/forgotten homework requests, but as we pass the hundredth hour, I feel my already tenuous grip on sanity start to slip.

Finally, at some point they’re all in bed. Amazing!

But then something like this happens:

All is quiet.

Thirty minutes go by.

Half the kids are already sleeping.

We’re doing well.

All of a sudden I hear a bloodcurdling scream: “Mommy, come quick!”

I speed down the hall, because obviously my five-year-old is bleeding or has broken a limb and also I had better get to him before he wakes up the kids who are finally sleeping.