“Good Morning, Roark. Did you sleep good?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did you have some nice dreams?”

“Yea.”

“Oh yea?  What did you dream about?”

“I just dreamed about black.”

When he wakes, he likes to collect toys from around his room, climb back into bed, and play quietly in his covers.  Around 7:30 every morning,  I open his bedroom door  and with a big smile, ask him how he slept and if he’s ready for breakfast.  At which point, he jumps out of bed, happy to begin another day.

I know this is the routine.

However, this particular morning, I broke the routine.  Instead of entering his room with my normal smiles and inquiries, I had my camera  in his face.

Note to self: Roarkie does not like to begin a day with having his picture taken.  I had to spend the next half hour holding him close in the rocking chair and reassuring him that the day could still go on.  It took him a while to believe me.

I am in a GREAT mood today.  I mean, really good…like Snow White met me in the mirror this morning with birds singing on my shoulder kind of good.  There are several factors responsible for this mood, but probably most important is that I actually slept for seven hours last night…seven hours IN A ROW.

I forget how sleep deprived I am until the rare occasions when I get a good night’s sleep.  I then spend the next day with a pep in my step and humming show tunes because I feel so good and have a new found energy.

I love my babies, more than life itself, but they rob me of sleep.   At least once a night, I’ll hear Roark whimpering because of a lost paci and have to scurry out of bed to replace it before his whimper turns into a full on fit.  And then later I’ll be woken up by a knock at the door and the announcement that someone, who will remain nameless, has wet the bed (and no, I’m not talking about Ken).  Throw into the mix a cat that insists on knocking over all of the stuff on my nightstand and the fact that I have a bladder the size of a peanut, and well, I average about five hours of actual sleep a night.

So this morning when I rolled over and saw that it was 6:30, I couldn’t believe that I had been in the bed the entire night and not woken up once.   What an amazing feeling to be rested and want to get out of bed.  I’m sure it was a fluke and won’t happen again for a very long time, but Edie enjoyed the spectacle this morning as she watched me dance around the kitchen while making toast for everybody.  I know it was a nice change from the bleary-eyed ogre that  normally greets her in the mornings grunting and muttering incoherently, and unfortunately will probably be back tomorrow.