I have been utterly exhausted for the last week or so. The kids aren’t keeping me up at night, I’m just having trouble getting into bed at a reasonable hour. And I’m not even accomplishing much of anything in that time—just hanging out, being awake. Hooray! Way to use my time wisely.

Not related to my exhaustion at all is the fact that Owen’s birthday will be this weekend. He’ll be three, finally, though of course he already thinks he IS. One of Dane’s sisters gave him a birthday gift yesterday, because she’s going to a friend’s wedding instead of to our birthday fiesta. (Seriously, couldn’t her friend have planned that a little better? Never mind that I didn’t schedule our party until last week, that’s entirely irrelevant.)

So we walk in the door to see her yesterday and she says immediately, “Sorry in advance about the size, but I’ve got a gift for Owen!” Always a good start. He tears into the thing, which is longer than he is tall, and discovers… “A tanker! Mama, it’s a TANKER!” It’s a dairy truck from Braum’s, brought home from a trip to visit relatives in Arkansas. Complete with pictures of cows on the side. Wow.

As you can imagine, he had to sleep with the thing last night (because what says “bedtime” like a two and a half foot long metal dairy tanker? Nothing I can think of). And THEN. And THEN! When the sun began to rise this morning, Owen leaped out of bed because The Tanker! The Tanker MISSED HIM! The Tanker (and it sounds like that, The Tanker, when he says it) NEEDS to be pushed up and down the hallway at top speed with a “vroom-vroom-vroom-eeek!” noise while everyone else is sleeping! At almost five o’clock in the morning!

Dane and I spent two hours dazedly trying to help Owen understand that it was still Laying Down Time, that Mommy and Daddy will NOT SURVIVE the day if we start it at 5 AM with vroom noise, and that The Tanker IS STILL SLEEPY.

Obviously, our efforts were fruitful and he went right back to sleep.

Oh, wait, no. Eventually I kicked Dane into consciousness and told him to go start a Bob the Builder movie before Owen woke the girls. Except—surprise! Audrey was already awake. And thus began my day.

I think over the course of the day I consumed a sum total of 6 chocolate cupcakes (baked last night, in practice for this weekend’s birthday party, of course) and a mug of green tea with more honey than any non-bee creature ought ever to consume. Maybe I’ll make some real dinner after the kids go to bed. Which really ought to happen about NOW, given that they’ve mostly been up since five o’clock this morning and it’s now 8:00 at night.

Wish me luck.